s an officer of the
East Indy Company, when the ship was taken by the pirates. The men was
all killed, but she and some other women was taken on board the pirate
and at last brought there. The French captain took a fancy to her from
the first, and after she had been there a year brought a Spanish priest
they captured on board a ship and he married them. The pirates seemed to
think it was a joke, and lots of them followed the captain's example and
got married to the women there. What they did with the priest afterward,
whether they cut his throat or landed him in some place thousands of
miles away, or entered him on board ship, is more nor I know.

"There's no doubt the captain's wife was fond of her husband; pirate as
he was, he had not behaved so bad to her--but except when he was with
her she was always sad.

"She had an awful horror of the life he led, and with this was a terror
lest he should fall into the hands of a cruiser, for she knew that if
he hadn't the good luck to be killed in the fight, he would be tried and
hung at the nearest port. It was a kind of mixed feeling, you see; she
would have given everything to be free from the life she was leading,
and yet even had she had the chance she would not have left her husband.
I believe he had promised her to give it up, but she must have knowed
that he never would do it; besides, if he had slipped away from the ship
at any place where they touched he could not have got her away, and her
life would have paid for his desertion.

"But I don't think he would have gone if he could, for, quiet and nice
as he was when at home, he was a demon at sea. Ruffians and scoundrels
as were his crew, the boldest of them were afraid of him. It was not a
word and a blow, but a word and a pistol shot with him; and if it
hadn't been that he was a first rate seaman, that he fought his ships
splendidly, and that there was no one who could have kept any show of
order or discipline had he not been there, I don't believe they would
have put up with him for a day.

"Well, lad, I sailed with them for three voyages. I won't tell you what
I saw and heard, but it was years before I could sleep 'well at night,
but would start up in a cold sweat with those scenes before my eyes and
those screams ringing in my ears. I can say that I never took the life
of a man or woman. Of course I had to help to load the cannon, and when
the time for boarding came would wave my cutlass and fire my pistols
wi