MORE desperate than any of his predecessors was the ocean scourge known as Bartholomew the Exterminator. Who he was, or where he came from, nobody knew, for he pops up all of a sudden in pirate history as the captain of a Buccaneer ship with four three-pounder guns and about thirty men, prowling about over the seas ready to prey on anything Spanish.

Bartholomew's most desperate undertaking as a pirate was the attacking of a big galleon that had a crew of seventy sailors, all well armed, besides many passengers, equally well provided to resist any effort at capture. Coming alongside the galleon, the order to board was given, but the captain was ready to receive them, and his men recognizing the nature of their adversary, determined to fight for their lives. And they did fight, so lustily too, that Bartholomew and his desperadoes were driven back to their own ship which some of them were only able to reach by swimming, for several were forced into the water.

Thus discomfitted, the Buccaneer hauled off, and instead of again trying to board, contented himself with keeping up a fire of musketry and cannon on the doomed vessel. The Spaniard had twenty guns, but every man that attempted to work them was shot through the head. The captain, of the Spanish ship at last tried to hoist sail and get away, but the sailors who climbed the ropes were shot and fell on the deck. For five long hours the battle was kept up at long range, and until the Buccaneers again came to close quarters, when they found that their fire had been so deadly that there, were not enough men left alive on the Spaniard to make resistance.

But his triumph was short lived. Proud of his capture, he deserted his own ship and took his crew on the galleon, and then paraded up and down the coast of Cuba to display his prize. It was a piece of ill-timed braggadocio, for running into a Cuban port for water, three Spanish men-of-war suddenly appeared at the mouth of the harbor. The Buccaneers made a stout fight, but their ship was beaten to pieces and most of the crew killed. Bartholomew was taken, after his ammunition was all gone and his cutlass broken, and as the Spaniards did not know him, he hoped for a chance to escape. But the fleet ran into Campeachy, where Bartholomew had been once or twice in the exercise of his profession, and he was at once recognized by scores of people who were indebted to him for the loss of their valuables and were delighted beyond expression at the unexpected opportunity of quickly paying off old scores.

A HAIR-BREADTH ESCAPE.

His capture was an event of national importance; the day appointed for his execution was proclaimed a holiday. Fearing their captive, even in his chains, the Spaniards gave him no notice of his approaching fate, but one day his jailer dropped a hint of the truth, by pointing with his finger out of the cabin window to a neighboring hill on the shore where, most clearly defined against the sky, Bartholomew saw a newly-erected gibbet. "A word to the wise is sufficient," and, in some matters, Bartholomew was one of the wisest. That night, by a desperate effort the pirate chief got one hand free from his shackles, called the sentinel, and as soon as the man incautiously approached within his reach, struck him so terrible a blow on the temple that he fell dead. Seizing a couple of small wine casks, he took one under each arm, and letting himself quietly out of the cabin window swam to shore, a distance of more than a mile.

But with his escape from the ship and the sharks of the harbor his troubles were only begun. He knew that with the first dawn the Spaniards and their bloodhounds would be on his track. How to elude them he knew not, but remembering that these animals were sometimes thrown off the scent by running water, lie found his way to the nearest stream, waded up it for several miles, then concealed himself at a point where the overhanging and moss-grown roots of a great tree presented a canopy above a pool of water not quite three feet deep. Here he took up his station, and for four days remained in this hiding place, half submerged in the water, while each, day he could hear in the forest around his covert the baying of the hounds and, encouraging shouts of the Spaniards eager for his life. Once the searching party passed within a hundred yards of his tree and he gave himself up for lost, but the hounds failed to take the scent; on another occasion two Spaniards and a negro sat on the roots above his head and discussed what they would do with the reward should they be so fortunate as to capture the fugitive. At last, however, the sounds of pursuit died away and he ventured forth from his place of concealment.

FOREST DANGERS ENCOUNTERED.

His condition was desperate. He was unarmed, half naked, and starving; in the midst of a hostile country, he dared not venture to ask for aid, not even to allow himself to be seen by a human being, for the irons, which he had not been able to get off his wrist or ankle, proclaimed his condition as an escaped fugitive, and he had learned from the conversation he overheard that the reward on his head was a princely fortune, which men would risk their lives to win. To add to the difficulties of his position, in every stream alligators abounded, every thicket was infested with ferocious animals, venomous reptiles and insects, while the ground was covered with thorns and he was without shoes.

For several days after his escape he could journey only by night, and his sufferings from hunger were frightful. He ate such roots or herbs as he could dig from the ground with his fingers; and to such an extremity of hunger was he reduced that a half putrid shell-fish he found on the shore seemed, as he afterward said, "to be the most delicious morsel I had ever tasted." He tore away a portion of his clothing and made a protection for his feet, which did not, however, prevent their becoming so swollen and cut with the thorns, that with great difficulty could he take a step. When he came to a stream he endeavored to frighten away the alligators by making a noisy splashing in the water and then swam quickly across, trusting to good fortune to escape their all-devouring jaws. He had no knife, the Spaniards having been afraid to trust him with one, but finding a few embers, where a party of hunters had left a fire, he kindled them to a blaze, and utilized the flames to prepare, by burning and charring, a branch to answer as a club. It proved his salvation that night, for on climbing into a tree, his usual resting place, he was attacked by a jaguar which he had the good fortune to kill with a single blow of his weapon. With his teeth he tore the skin from the carcass, in which he encased his feet, thus providing a much more substantial protection than the rags which he had been wearing. The flesh of the animal made a repast such as he had not enjoyed since his escape and refreshed by animal food he said, "Once more I felt like I could fight a dozen Spaniards."

BARTHOLOMEW FINDS SAFETY AT LAST.

Fourteen days of incredible dangers and privations were passed by Bartholomew in his unparalleled journey through a tropical wilderness, when about noon of the fifteenth day as, almost overpowered by the heat and his sufferings, he was making his way through a bit of thorny jungle he heard the sound of hammers some distance ahead. Cautiously he approached the edge of the thicket and peeped out. Before him lay a stretch of level beach, on which one or two tents had been set up; on a knoll some distance away stood a sentinel, scanning the forest for any sign of approaching enemies; a boat, pulled by a half dozen men with red shirts, was approaching the shore, and half a mile from the land was a Buccaneer ship, careened over on her side. The carpenters were caulking her timbers, and it was the sound of their busy hammers which first caught his ear.

The nearest pirates stood aghast at the figure which came out of the bushes and limped across the sand. Save a piece of cloth around the waist, and some torn pieces of jaguar skin on his feet, the man was naked; on one wrist and on, the opposite ankle were the irons which he had borne from Campeachy; his frame was gaunt with hunger, and covered with cuts and scars from the thorns, while his hair and beard were matted with dirt and grease, giving him a truly fearful appearance. In one hand Bartholomew bore his great black club, and in the other, as a last protection against starvation, a leg of the jaguar which he had killed. Almost delirious with suffering, Bartholomew could scarcely tell who he was, and the pirates had equal difficulty in believing that this was their former leader, whom they believed dead, but who had made his way alone and without arms through a hundred miles of the worst jungle in Central America.

BARTHOLOMEW CAPTURES THE SHIP FROM WHICH HE ESCAPED.

Joyfully received, he soon recuperated from his privations and proposed to his companions no less a project than the capture of the ship from which he had so narrowly escaped. A hundred volunteers accompanied him, and leaving their vessel some miles from Campeachy and out of sight, the freebooters proceeded, at dead of night, in open boats into the harbor. The vessel from which Bartholomew had fled was lying at anchor in the bay. Silently the boats came along side, but not so quietly but that they were espied and challenged by the watchman. In a low voice the Buccaneers explained, in Spanish that they were bringing smuggled goods on board, and that the sentinel should have a fair share.

His cupidity overcoming his caution, the sailor on watch bade the strangers approach, and a dozen Buccaneers, with bundles and bales began to climb the side. In a moment the sentinel was stabbed, the ropes were manned, and the crew awoke to find the main deck held by five-score of cutthroats armed to the teeth, and the ship on her way out of the harbor, while Bartholomew pleasantly introduced himself to them in a little speech before throwing them overboard, and sent his quondam jailer back in a small boat to give his compliments to the people of the town, and to suggest that the reward for his capture be paid to the widows and orphans of the sailors of the captured ship.

OTHER CRUEL AND DESPERATE PIRATES.

And there were many like Bartholomew; Dumont, who with one companion captured a Spanish ship, and compelled the crew to sail it for him to Tortuga; and L'Olonnais, who used in his pleasant moments to hang up captured Spaniards by their beards to make them tell where their money was; and Smith, who, single-handed, chased the population of a Cuban town into the woods; and Davis, who made a specialty of tying down his captives so they could not stir hand or foot, and then tickling them to death; and Otto the Dutchman, who, with one Stroke of his ten-pound cutlass, cut a Spaniard exactly in half; and Pierson, a Norwegian, who, with a sabre, would shave off the ears of his prisoners close to the head and made a boast that he had cut off over seven hundred pairs of ears without once touching the victims' shoulders; and Matt, the Italian, who made a collection of nearly a thousand great toes, of which he had deprived his captives, and always became angry if the suspicion was expressed that any one captive contributed more than one great toe. "They are none of them mates," he would roar, laying his hand on the cutlass that always swung at his side, and all argument ceased at this point. And there was Monbars, also called an Exterminator, who when a boy contracted so intense a hatred of the Spaniards from reading of their conquests in the New World, that in a school-play he fell foul of a companion who personated a Spaniard and tried to kill him, and was only prevented from doing so by a bailiff who chanced to be a witness of the boy's ferocity. Such a beginning boded ill for the Spaniards, and Monbars deserved his nickname as much as did Bartholomew. Nor must "Cross-Eyed John" be forgotten, who could shoot as well as if both eyes were good, and who, when his ship was boarded and taken by an overwhelming force of the enemy, went below and blew up the magazine rather than surrender.

Brave captains make men brave, and it was under the leadership of such men that the Buccaneers learned their trade; it was the reputation of such men that attracted adventurers and outlaws from every land; people saw only the brilliant courage and forgot the brutal ferocity which underlay the characters of the bandit chief; over the life of a Buccaneer, to the youth of that day, the rosy light of romance was shed; men did not remember that every coin gained by the outlaws was the price of blood. It was under such leaders, too, that the Buccaneers learned their own strength and the value of united action, and from scattered bands they united themselves into great armies, and concentrated the prowling pirate ships into fleets of irresistible might and prowess.