In chapter 13 of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the three young pirates who meet on Jackson's Island are Tom Sawyer, the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main; Huck Finn, the Red-Handed; and Joe Harper, the Terror of the Seas. Their lifestyle does not feature any actual piracy, but it does include a great deal of cooking, eating, and talking about pirates.

The boys all bring supplies to Jackson's Island: ham and bacon to cook, and tobacco to smoke—though, as it turns out, Huck is the only smoker. They sail to the island with a lot of seafaring orders and expressions which are used "only for 'style,' and were not intended to mean anything in particular." They build a campfire and indulge in a feast of fried bacon and corn pone, then lie on the grass and discuss the piratical life. They talk of how their friends would envy what they are doing, and how much better it is to be a pirate than a hermit, a vocation Huck had thought of pursuing. Tom is, predictably, the most enthusiastic, and explains to the others what pirates do:

Oh, they have just a bully time—take ships and burn them, and get the money and bury it in awful places in their island where there’s ghosts and things to watch it, and kill everybody in the ships—make ’em walk a plank.

As they fall asleep around the campfire, however, the boys feel pangs of conscience about stealing the food, which suggests that a life of robbery with violence might not really suit them as well as they imagine.