grunts of admiration the pirates stayed where they were, and went about their business of launching the boats and stripping the body of Red Gil, while the man in black and silver, the Spaniard, the two gravediggers, the knave with the wounded shoulder, and myself walked briskly up the beach.

With these five at my heels I strode up to the dying fire and to those who had sprung to their feet at our approach. “Sparrow,” I said easily, “luck being with us as usual, I have fallen in with a party of rovers. I have told them who I am, — that Kirby, to wit, whom an injurious world calls the blackest pirate unhanged, — and have recounted to them how the great galleon which I took some months ago went down yesterday with all on board, you and I with these others being the sole survivors.