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mass is planted before you; and he moves as though he pushed his own invisible cage ahead of him.”

“You might create a title,” John Evelyn suggested. “It seems wasteful to let a million get away without even trying.”

Sir Henry Morgan was announced.

“Step in, Sir. Step in!” The King saw that he had a glass of wine in his hands, Henry seemed frightened. He gulped the wine.

“Good job of yours in Panama,” the King observed. “It was better to burn it now than later, and I have no doubt we should have had to do it later.”

“I thought of that when I set the torch, Sire. These hoggish Spaniards want to over-run the world.”

“You know, Captain, piracy—or, to be delicate, freebooting—has been a good thing for us, and a bad thing for Spain. But the institution grows to be a nuisance. I spend half of my time making excuses to the Spanish Ambassador. I am going to commission you Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica.”

“Sire!”

“No thanks! I am acting on the advice of an adage. Piracy must be stopped now. These men have played at little wars long enough.”

“But, Sire, I myself was a buccaneer. Do you want me to hang my own men?”

“That is what I inferred, Sir. Who can track them down better than you who know all their haunts?”