Dead men can tell no tales.

>The following excerpt is from the dying declaration of one of several pirates who were hung in about 1830 in Cadiz, Spain. It’s thought that he may have been one of Captain Gibbs’s men. When the British raided Gibbs’s Cuban base camp in the summer of 1824, from the burned ships they found there they estimated the murdered crews amounted to about 150 people. Gibbs and most of his men escaped that raid by fleeing into the woods. This pirate apparently was one of these. >*[…]* >*- our place of rendezvous and deposit of goods at that time, was a small island or key in the neighborhood of Cuba; our prizes were generally conveyed there, and after being disburthened of the most valuable part of their cargoes, were sometimes burnt and at other times scuttled, and the crews, if it was thought not necessary otherways to dispose of them were sent adrift in their boats, and frequently without any thing on which they could subsist a single day – nor were all so fortunate thus to escape – “dead men can tell no tales,” was a common saying among us, and as soon as we got a ship’s crew in our power, a short consultation was held, and if it was the opinion of the majority that it would be better to take life than to spare it, a single nod or wink from our captain was sufficient – regardless of age or sex, all entreaties for mercy were then made in vain – we possessed not the tender feelings to be operated upon by the shrieks and expiring groans of the devoted victims! – there was rather a strife among us, who, with his own hands, should dispatch the greatest number, and in the shortest period of time.* ___________________________ **Source:** Stephens, John Richard. “Weird Literature.” *Weird History 101: Tales of Intrigue, Mayhem, and Outrageous Behavior*. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2006. 197. Print.