But many of those ships bearing treasure never reached Spain. Pirates—sea robbers—lay in wait to rob the land robbers. It was better sport to rob robbers than to rob the poor Indians. These pirates were bold and bad and cold and cruel. They wore blood-red sashes round their waists, blood-red handkerchiefs round their necks, and blood-red handkerchiefs round their heads. They hung huge rings in their ears and huge bracelets on their arms, and they were “armed to the teeth”—whatever that means. They hid behind these little islands in the Caribbean Sea, and when they saw a treasure ship coming from afar they hoisted a black flag to their ship’s mast, a flag with a skull and two bones crossed on it, and sailed forth and captured the ship, its treasures, and its crew. They made the crew slaves, or if the pirates didn’t want any more slaves, they made their captives “walk the plank”—that is, walk blindfolded out on a plank set over the ship’s edge. They would reach the end and suddenly step off into the sea and be drowned. Then the pirate would load the treasure he had captured into a huge iron-bound chest, sail back to his little island, and bury the treasure chest in a hole in the sand. He would mark the spot on a map with an X so that he might find it when he wanted it, and so that no one else could find it.

These pirates are gone long years ago, and the ships that sail the blue Caribbean have now no fear of pirates any more, and few of these ships carry anything that pirates would want. But the sea is so blue and the weather so warm and the islands so lovely that many people make voyages to the Pirate Seas just for pleasure. I did once myself.

I left New York when it was snowing and in two days I was on an island called Bermuda, where it was warm and sunny. Easter lilies were growing in the fields, and new potatoes and onions. Farmers were raising them to send to shivering New York so that Americans might have warm-weather flowers and warm-weather vegetables long before warm weather itself came.