62 THE SEA. 



repeatedly. At length they sent him a small supply, but it was not sufficient to pay his 

 debts. He therefore resolved to go at once to Bristol and have a personal interview with 

 the merchants themselves. However, on arriving there he met with a mortifying repulse; 

 for when he desired them to account with him, they silenced him by threatening to 

 disclose his real character; thus proving themselves as good land-rats as he had been a 

 water-rat. 



Aveiy went again to Ireland, and from thence solicited the merchants very strongly, 

 but to no purpose, so that he was reduced to utter beggary. Next we find him on 

 board a trading vessel working his passage over to Plymouth, from whence he travelled 

 on foot to Bideford. He had been there but a few days when he fell sick, and died, 

 " not being worth as much money as would buy him a coffin." Such was the end 

 of a man who had, in his brief career, astonished and alarmed not merely the Great 

 Mogul of all the Indies, and the great East India Company, but had become a hero 

 of romance in Europe. 



And now to return to the unfortunate sloops. Their provisions were nearly exhausted, 

 and although fish and fowl were readily obtainable at Madagascar, whither they returned, 

 they had no salt to cure them for a long voyage. They therefore made an encampment 

 on the coast, where they were joined by other piratical Englishmen who had selected the 

 island as a permanent place of settlement. When the pirates first settled there many of 

 the native princes were very friendly, and the former, having fire-arms, which in those 

 days the latter had not, often joined in the inter-tribal wars, carrying terror wherever they 

 went. Half a dozen pirates with a small native army would put a much larger number 

 of the enemy to flight, and they were therefore great personages, and were almost 

 worshipped. 



By these means they became in a little time very formidable, and such prisoners as 

 they took in war were employed in cultivating the ground, and the most beautiful of the 

 women they married; nor were they contented with one wife, but often adopted the 

 practice of polygamy. The natural result was, that they separated, each of them choosing 

 a convenient place for himself, where he lived in princely style, surrounded by his family, 

 slaves, and dependents. Nor was it long before jarring interests excited them to draw 

 the sword against each other, and they appeared in the field of battle, at the head of their 

 respective clans as it were. In these civil wars their number and strength were very soon 

 greatly lessened. 



These pirates, in the strange manner elevated to the dignity of petty princes, and 

 being destitute of honourable principles, used their power with the most wanton barbarity. 

 The most trifling offences were punished with death; the victim was led to a tree, and 

 instantly shot through the head. The negroes at length, exasperated by continual oppression, 

 formed the determination to exterminate their masters in the course of a single night; and 

 this was not apparently a very difficult matter to accomplish, so much were they divided. 

 Fortunately, however, for them, a negro woman who was partial to them ran twenty 

 miles in three hours, and warning them of their danger, they were united in arms to oppose 

 the negroes before the latter had assembled. This narrow escape made them more cautious. 

 Bv degrees the original stock of course died out, and when Captain Woods Rodgers called 



