Book of Pirates | Page 3

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Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates Scanned by Charles Keller with OmniPage Professional
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Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates

Fiction, Fact & Fancy concerning the Buccaneers & Marooners of the Spanish Main:
From the writing & Pictures of Howard Pyle:
Compiled by Merle Johnson

CONTENTS
FOREWORD BY MERLE JOHNSON
PREFACE

I. BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN II. THE GHOST OF
CAPTAIN BRAND III. WITH THE BUCCANEERS IV. TOM CHIST AND THE
TREASURE BOX V. JACK BALLISTER'S FORTUNES VI. BLUESKIN THE PIRATE
VII. CAPTAIN SCARFIELD

FOREWORD
PIRATES, Buccaneers, Marooners, those cruel but picturesque sea wolves who once
infested the Spanish Main, all live in present-day conceptions in great degree as drawn by
the pen and pencil of Howard Pyle.
Pyle, artist-author, living in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first decade of
the twentieth, had the fine faculty of transposing himself into any chosen period of
history and making its people flesh and blood again--not just historical puppets. His
characters were sketched with both words and picture; with both words and picture he
ranks as a master, with a rich personality which makes his work individual and attractive
in either medium.
He was one of the founders of present-day American illustration, and his pupils and
grand-pupils pervade that field to-day. While he bore no such important part in the world
of letters, his stories are modern in treatment, and yet widely read. His range included
historical treatises concerning his favorite Pirates (Quaker though he was); fiction, with
the same Pirates as principals; Americanized version of Old World fairy tales; boy stories
of the Middle Ages, still best sellers to growing lads; stories of the occult, such as In
Tenebras and To the Soil of the Earth, which, if newly published, would be hailed as
contributions to our latest cult.
In all these fields Pyle's work may be equaled, surpassed, save in one. It is improbable
that anyone else will ever bring his combination of interest and talent to the depiction of
these old-time Pirates, any more than there could be a second Remington to paint the now
extinct Indians and gun-fighters of the Great West.
Important and interesting to the student of history, the adventure-lover, and the artist, as
they are, these Pirate stories and pictures have been scattered through many magazines
and books. Here, in this volume, they are gathered together for the first time, perhaps not
just as Mr. Pyle would have done, but with a completeness and appreciation of the real
value of the material which the author's modesty might not have permitted. MERLE
JOHNSON.

PREFACE
WHY is it that a little spice of deviltry lends not an unpleasantly titillating twang to the
great mass of respectable flour that goes to make up the pudding of our modern
civilization? And pertinent to this question another--Why is it that the pirate has, and
always has had, a certain lurid glamour of the heroical enveloping him round about? Is

there, deep under the accumulated debris of culture, a hidden groundwork of the old-time
savage? Is there even in these well-regulated times an unsubdued nature in the
respectable mental household of every one of us that still kicks against the pricks of law
and order? To make my meaning more clear, would not every boy, for instance-- that is,
every boy of any account--rather be a pirate captain than a Member of Parliament? And
we ourselves--would we not rather read such a story as that of Captain Avery's capture of
the East Indian treasure ship, with its beautiful princess and load of jewels (which gems
he sold by the handful, history sayeth, to a Bristol merchant), than, say, one of Bishop
Atterbury's sermons, or the goodly Master Robert Boyle's religious romance of
"Theodora and Didymus"? It is to be apprehended that to the unregenerate nature of most
of us there can be but one answer to such a query.
In the pleasurable warmth the heart feels in answer to tales of derring-