The ship would follow, and would pile up on a sunken reef that the pirates had just steered around." "Clever work!" "They were a thrifty and shrewd crowd those old-time black-flaggers.

After they were wiped out the wreckers still reaped their fine harvest by signaling ships onto reefs at night.

Their descendants live down among some of the keys still.

We call them 'conchs,' around here.

They're an illiterate, uncivilized, furtive, eccentric lot.