Arthur D. Howden Smith 
Porto Bello gold 

I was in the counting-room, talking with Peter Corlaer, the chief of our fur-traders—he was that very day come down-river from the Iroquois country—when the boy, Darby, ran in from the street.

‘The Bristol packet is in, Master Robert, ‘ he cried. ‘And, oh, sir, the watermen do say there be a pirate ship off the Hook!’

I remember I laughed at the combination of awe and delight in his face. He was a raw, bog-trotting bit of a gossoon we had bought at the last landing of bonded folk, and he talked with a brogue that thickened whenever he grew excited.

‘For the packet, I do not doubt you, Darby, ‘ I answered. ‘But you must show me the pirate.’

Peter Corlaer chuckled in his quiet, rumbling way, his huge belly waggling before him beneath his buckskin hunting-shirt, for all the world like a monster mold of jelly.

‘Ja, ja, show us der pirates, ‘ he jeered.

Darby flared up in a burst of Irish temper that matched his tangled red hair.