But it must not be supposed that
because buccaneering had died out, that piracy was dead. If we tear
down a wasps' nest, we destroy the abode of a fierce and pitiless
community, but we scatter the wasps, and it is likely that each one of
them, in the unrestricted and irresponsible career to which he has been
unwillingly forced, will prove a much more angry and dangerous insect
than he had ever been before.
This is what happened to these buccaneers who would not give up a
piratical life; driven away from Jamaica, from San Domingo, and even
from Tortuga, they retained a resting-place only at New Providence, an
island in the Bahamas, and this they did not maintain very long. Then
they spread themselves all over the watery world. They were no longer
buccaneers, they were no longer brothers of any sort or kind, they no
longer set out merely to pillage and fight the Spaniards, but their
attacks were made upon people of every nation. English ships and French
ships, once safe from them, were a welcome prey to these new pirates,
unrestrained by any kind of loyalty, even by any kind of enmity. They
were more rapacious, they were more cruel, they were more like fiends
than they had ever been before. They were cowardly and they no longer
proceeded against towns which might be defended, nor ran up alongside of
a man-of-war to boldly board her in the very teeth of her guns.
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