Page:Daring deeds of famous pirates; true stories of the stirring adventures, bravery and resource of pirates, filibusters & buccaneers (1917).djvu/18

 regard to piracy. Right on through time the northern coast of Africa was the hotbed of pirates. Not till Admiral Lord Exmouth, in the year 1816, was sent to quell Algiers did Mediterranean piracy receive its death-blow, though it lingered on for some little time later.

But piracy is not confined to any particular nation nor to any particular sea, any more than the spirit of adventure is the exclusive endowment of any particular race. There have been notorious pirates in the North Sea as in the Mediterranean, there have been European pirates in the Orient just as there have been Moorish pirates in the English Channel. There have been British pirates on the waters of the West Indies as there have been of Madagascar. There have flourished pirates in the North, in the South, in the East and the West—in China, Japan, off the coast of Malabar, Borneo, America and so on. The species of ships are often different, the racial characteristics of the sea-*rovers are equally distinct, yet there is still the same determined clashing of wills, the same desperate nature of the contests, the same exciting adventure; and in the following pages it will be manifest that in spite of differences of time and place the romance of piratical incident lives on for the reason that human nature, at its basis, is very much alike the whole world over.

But we must make a distinction between isolated and collected pirates. There is a great dissimilarity, for instance, between a pickpocket and a band of brigands. The latter work on a grander, bolder system. So it has always been with the robbers of the sea. Some have been brigands, some have been mere pickpockets. The "grand" pirates set to work on a big scale. It was not enough to lie in wait for single merchant ships: they swooped down on to seaside towns and villages, carried off by sheer force