much abated their
fury.

"We had, in all, thirteen killed and twenty-four
wounded; and we were told that we destroyed about
ninety, or a hundred, of the pirates. I am persuaded
that, had our consort the _Greenwich_ done her duty, we
could have destroyed both of them, and got two hundred
thousand pounds ($1,000,000.00) for our owners and
ourselves."

What say you to this fight? And to think that our own good friend
Captain Mackra just missed being a millionaire! Weep for the gallant
sea warrior!

At any rate he got safely away, for, at length going aboard one of the
piratical vessels,--under a flag of truce--he discovered that several
of the wild sea-robbers knew him; some of them--even--had sailed with
him in earlier years.

"I found this to be of great advantage," he writes. "For,
notwithstanding their promise not to harm me, some of them would have
cut me to pieces, had it not been for their chief, Captain Edward
England, and some others whom I knew."

And he used his powers of persuasion to such effect that: "They made
me a present of the shattered ship--which was Dutch built--called the
_Fancy_, her burden being about three hundred tons.

"With jury-masts, and such other old sails as they left me, I set sail
on September 8th, with forty-three of my ship's crew, including two
passengers and twelve soldiers. After a passage of forty-eight days I
arrived at Bombay on the 26th of October, almost naked and starved,
having been reduced to a pint of water a day, and almost in despair of
ever seeing land, by reason of the calms we met with between the coast
of Arabia and Malabar."

The gallant writer of this interesting description was certainly in
imminent danger of his life, when he trusted himself upon the pirate
ship, and unquestionably nothing could have justified such a hazardous
step but the desperate circumstances in which he was placed. The honor
and influence of Captain England, however, protected him and his men
from the wrath of the crew, who would willingly have wreaked their
vengeance upon those who had dealt them such heavy blows in the recent
fight.

But the generosity of Captain England toward the unfortunate Mackra
proved to be calamitous to himself.

"You are no true pirate," cried one of his crew. "For a buccaneer
never allows his foes to get away."

"No! No!" shouted others. "This fighting Mackra will soon come
against us with a strong force. You did wron