But being without conscience or scruples, and determined to get rich at no matter what cost, deriving from gambling and speculation what they might have earned by patient and steady work, they engaged in all sorts of impossible adventures.
One day they were rich, the next day poor, like most of the questionable individuals who had hurried to the gold-fields in search of fortune.
Among the diggers in New South Wales was a man of incomparable audacity, one of those men who stick at nothing--not even at crime--and whose influence upon bad and violent natures is irresistible.
That man's name was Ker Karraje.
The origin or nationality or antecedents of this pirate were never established by the investigations ordered in regard to him.

He eluded all pursuit, and his name--or at least the name he gave himself--was known all over the world, and inspired horror and terror everywhere, as being that of a legendary personage, a bogey, invisible and unseizable.
I have now reason to believe that Ker Karraje is a Malay.

However, it is of little consequence, after all.

What is certain is that he was with reason regarded as a formidable and dangerous villain who had many crimes, committed in distant seas, to answer for.
After spending a few years on the Australian goldfields, where he made the acquaintance of Engineer Serko and Captain Spade, Ker Karraje managed to seize a ship in the port of Melbourne, in the province of Victoria.

He was joined by about thirty rascals whose number was speedily tripled.