" The bushy-browed pirate of the drawn cutlass had so often
expressed his contempt for a soldier who would even surrender, to say
nothing of running away, that Esquemeling could scarcely believe that
Roc had retreated from his enemies, deserted his friends, and turned his
back upon the principles which he had always so truculently proclaimed.
But this downfall of a hero simply shows that Esquemeling, although he
was a member of the piratical body, and was proud to consider himself a
buccaneer, did not understand the true nature of a pirate. Under the
brutality, the cruelty, the dishonesty, and the recklessness of the
sea-robbers of those days, there was nearly always meanness and
cowardice. Roc, as we have said in the beginning of this sketch, was a
typical pirate; under certain circumstances he showed himself to have
all those brave and savage qualities which Esquemeling esteemed and
revered, and under other circumstances he showed those other qualities
which Esquemeling despised, but which are necessary to make up the true
character of a pirate.
The historian John seems to have been very much cut up by the manner in
which his favorite hero had rounded off his piratical career, and after
that he entirely dropped Roc from his chronicles.
This out-and-out pirate was afterwards living in Jamaica, and probably
engaged in new enterprises, but Esquemeling would have nothing more to
do with him nor with the history of his deeds.
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