New England seems to have at least as many pirates as honest seamen. But here, as in so many other matters, Providence has smiled upon Massachusetts, for Boston Harbor is choked with small islands that are washed by high tides, providing vast resources of pirate-hanging and -gibbeting real estate. Nearly all of it has been put to use. During the daytime, the gibbets are obscured by clouds of hungry birds. But it's the middle of the night, the birds are in Boston and Charlestown, slumbering in their nests of plaited pirate-hair. The tide is high, the tops of the reefs submerged, the supports rising directly out of the waves. And so as the singing slaves row Daniel out on what he assumes will be his last voyage, scores of dessicated and skeletonized pirates, suspended in midair above the moonlit sea, watch him go by, as a ceremonial honor-guard.