Pirates 65 



person of great importance, for he was hang- 

 man, and that post was no sinecure on "The Sure 

 Death." If one of the great family newspapers, 

 alluded to above, is to be relied upon, Captain 

 Ludlow, when business was heavy and many cap- 

 tives were coming his way, was in the habit of 

 taking a day off and holding a general hanging 

 bee. On such occasions, the Captain of "The 

 Sure Death" would be present in a semi-official 

 character, invariably white duck trousers, ruffled 

 shirt, and scarlet jacket and cap so covered with 

 gold braid as to look like the field of the cloth 

 of gold in miniature. It almost goes without the 

 saying that on such occasions, he puffed his cigar, 

 in all the bustle, with the bored expression of one 

 forced by politeness to listen to a very old story. 

 On such occasions, English Bone, the hangman, 

 held the center of the stage an artist in his line, 

 decorating the rigging with assorted bodies, 

 heavy-weights below and so on up, with an infant 

 at the fore-top gallant mast. It was always quite 

 clear that in the mind of the author, English 

 Bone had a mighty taking way with him. On 

 more than one occasion when his Captain was 

 bearing up manfully beneath all his gold lace on 

 deck, "The Sure Death" hopelessly becalmed, 

 English Bone had strung up one of the crew, just 

 to add interest to a sunset at sea. 



As the natural result of this kind of reading, 



