In the wake of the buccaneers

I had started forth on a novel journey, a trip I had long wanted to take—a cruise in the wake of the buccaneers. Many a time I had traversed the Caribbean, steaming from port to port of those island gems, the Lesser Antilles, that are strung, like emeralds and sapphires, in a great curving chain stretching from our own St. Thomas, five days south of New York, to Trinidad at the mouth of the Orinoco. Many a time, too, I had skirted the coasts, climbed the mountains, and explored the bush of Cuba, Porto Rico, Santo Domingo, and Jamaica.