'Too happy,' said I.
Behold me, then, a pirate! O jolly life! how I blessed the old notary for turning me out of doors! What feasting, what fighting, what wooing, what quarrelling! Sometimes we ran ashore and enjoyed ourselves like princes; sometimes we lay in a calm for days together on the loveliest sea that man ever traversed.

And then, if the breeze rose and a sail came in sight, who so merry as we?
I passed three years in that charming profession, and then, signor, I grew ambitious.

I caballed against the captain; I wanted his post.

One still night we struck the blow.

The ship was like a log in the sea, no land to be seen from the mast-head, the waves like glass, and the moon at its full.