Prince Rupert by Cutcliffe Hyne — Read

Now the captured pink, when they came to examine her, contained very small store of what the buccaneers consider valuable -- to wit, gold coins, jewels, or pearls. Merchandise, such as cottons and silks, she was well stocked with; chests of gold-laced clothes she carried, and in these the rude fellows decked themselves during the first search; but all this cargo required further barter before it could be turned into a carouse, and barter was a thing the buccaneers held in small esteem. It was their conceit that as free hunters they could peddle hides and meat and tallow without demeaning themselves; but to trade in merchant stuffs, such as oil, and cloth, and tinsels, and dyewood, was, in their idea, to dirty their fingers. Amongst the Brethren of the Coast there was very great niceness in such small matters as these.

The event, as it happened, fell in very handily with Prince Rupert's mood. Small gains were as useful to his Highness as nothing at all; it was constantly in his mind that he had to keep supplied the Court of his Majesty King Charles II. at The Hague; and, in fine, it was pieces-of-eight by the puncheonful and not by the purse which he sought. So he proposed manning the pink more stoutly, saying with purposeful vagueness that he intended to venture out upon the seas again in search of plate ships; and the buccaneers, who had helped him take her, agreed with shouts and a salvo from the guns.