William MacLeod Raine (June 22, 1871 - July 25, 1954), was a British-born American novelist who wrote fictional adventure stories about the American Old West. In 1959, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. In 1894, after graduating from Oberlin College, Raine left Arkansas and headed for the western US. He became the principal of a school in Seattle while contributing columns to a local newspaper. Later he moved to Denver, where he worked as a reporter and editorial writer for local periodicals, including the Republican, the Post, and the Rocky Mountain News.

All through the sixteenth century the South Seas were regarded as a mysterious wonderworld, whence Spain drew unlimited wealth of gold and silver bullion, of pearls and precious stones. Spain had declared the Pacific 'a closed sea' to the rest of the world. But in 1567 it happened that Sir John Hawkins, an English mariner, was cruising in the Gulf of Mexico, when a terrific squall, as he said, drove his ships landward to Vera Cruz, and he sent a messenger to the Spanish viceroy there asking permission to dock and repair his battered vessels. Now on one of the English ships was a young officer, not yet twenty-five years of age, named Francis Drake. Twelve Spanish merchantmen rigged as frigates lay in the harbour, and Drake observed that cargo of small bulk but ponderous weight, and evidently precious, was being stowed in their capacious holds. Was this the gold and silver bullion that was enriching Spain beyond men's dreams? Whence did it come? Could English privateers intercept it on the high seas?

'The Pirate of Panama' by William MacLeod Raine is a novel that begins with a man, our narrator, feeling that he is a misfit and is stuck in a humdrum job at a law firm. One day, fate intervenes and he finds a torn, yellowed piece of paper that could change his life forever. As he reads the paper, he realizes it's a treasure map, and he sets out on a hunt for buried treasure. This book is an action-packed adventure that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end.

Excerpt from The Pirate of Panama: A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure It was a dismal, sodden morning, with heavy clouds banked in the western sky. Rain had sloshed down since midnight so that the gutter in front of me was a turbid little river. A chill wind swept across the city and penetrated to the marrow. From the summit of the hill, three blocks above me, my car was sliding down, but I clung to the curb to postpone until the last moment a plunge into the flowing street. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The Pirate of PanamaWilliam macleod raineThe Pirates of Panama is a pirate classic that was originally written in Dutch by John Esquemeling, and first published in Amsterdam in 1678 under the title of De Americaeneche Zee Roovers. It immediately became very popular and this first hand history of the Buccaneers of America was soon translated into the principal European languages. The first English edition was printed in 1684We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.