Gentlemen’s Piracy
Cayo Hueso, Ponce de Leon’s isle of bones, dosed under the feet of thousands of March tourists. They called it Key West, not knowing any better, and thought it was the capital of the easy life. Five o’clock somewhere and all that Jimmy Buffet nonsense. Life had not been easy for the Calusa Indians, who left their dead to bleach in the sun on the tide line. It hadn’t been easy for Ponce de Leon, who took a poisoned arrow in the thigh on his way past and died in Cuba a few days later. It hadn’t been easy for the Americans in the 1830s, tryig to carve a living out...
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