68 



THE SEA. 



But some of her actions looked as though she had taken rather kindly to that unlawful 

 profession. 



When the royal pardon was granted to all pirates in the West Indies who should 

 abandon their mode of life before a given date, the crew with whom Mary was serving 

 availed themselves of it, and for some little time afterwards we find Mary working on a 

 privateer. The crew on this vessel soon after mutinied, and turned her into a pirate ship, 

 on which Mary is said to have behaved with almost ferocious bravery. When the vessel 

 was at last captured, she, with another female pirate, named Anne Bonney, and one male, 



THE FEMALE PIRATES. (From an Old Print.) 



were the last three on deck, the others having fled below. Mary on this occasion is said 

 to have fired a pistol among the cowardly sailors, killing one and wounding another. It 

 is just to her to say that in her intercourse with others she was modest to the last degree, 

 and her sex was undiscovered by the sailors. In fact, the before-named Anne Bonney, 

 thinking Mary Read was a handsome young man, fell violently in love with her, and the 

 latter was obliged to disclose her sex. She was a strong, robust woman, and although the 

 course of life she had undertaken made her practically a criminal of the worst description 

 a robber and a murderer she had, if all accounts are true, many very good qualities. 

 Captain Rackam, another pirate, not knowing at the time her sex, asked her one day why she- 

 or, as he thought, he had chosen a life so dangerous, and one which exposed her to the 

 risk of being hanged at any time. She answered that as to the hanging she thought 

 it no very great hardship, a for were it not for that every cowardly fellow would turn 

 pirate, and so infest the seas, while men of courage might starve ; that if it were put to 



