Piracy there had been, but of a queer kind, for not a farthing's worth had been touched except my packet of gold.

The skipper was honesty itself, and it was plain that the pirate who had chased the ship aground and then come aboard to plunder, had done it to do me hurt, and me alone.
All this made me feel pretty solemn.

My uncle was a rich man, but no firm could afford these repeated losses.

I was the most unpopular figure in Virginia, hated by many, despised by the genteel, whose only friends were my own servants and a few poverty-stricken landward folk.
I had found out a good way of trade, but I had set a hornet's nest buzzing about my ears, and was on the fair way to be extinguished.

This alliance between my rivals and the Free Companions was the last straw to my burden.