Pirate's Treasure

2 What was that sound? Giovanni brought a muddy hand up to his throbbing head. He listened again. There were men shouting, women screaming, the sounds of struggle and it was all getting louder, closer. He slowly raised himself onto one elbow and looked around. Where was he? He tried to remove the cobwebs from his brain. He remembered the sailors, Bayley, that horrible drink. Then......the alley. He was freezing. He looked down, all he had on were his undergarments. He felt the lump on his head. He began to see clearly...... “Look...Down there!” The voice was very close. He looked up the alley to see three men running towards him. They wore the cream colored pants and striped shirts he had seen on Royal Navy sailors and they were all big, muscular, and angry looking. Two of them carried sticks and the third had musket and a thick rope draped around his neck. Giovanni scrambled to get up out of the mud but his bare feet kept slipping and he felt dizzy. A...

1 It was early spring in the Year of our Lord 1711 and all of Europe was at war. A complicated series of marriages and alliances in the previous century had created a crisis of leadership that would, if allowed to stand, severely disrupt the balance of power. King Louis XIV of France had set his grandson Philip on the throne of Spain, a move designed to unite the two great powers. However, Leopold I of the Holy Roman Empire had other plans. While he sought to establish his own claim to the Spanish throne, his more immediate concern was preventing the unification of France and Spain. To do so he enlisted the help of England and the Netherlands. The war began, as many do, with great energy, enthusiasm and patriotic fervor. Soon, however, French expansion was checked, the fighting in Spain reduced to a stalemate. By 1711, the war had drug on for almost ten years in both the Old World and the New. In such a climate there are those who become rich, those who become...