roat, began as follows: "I am sorry," he
said, "that you can't have your sloop again, for I scorn to do anyone any
mischief--when it is not to my advantage--though you are a sneaking puppy,
and so are all those who will submit to be governed by laws which rich men
have made for their own security, for the cowardly whelps have not the
courage otherwise to defend what they get by their knavery. But damn ye
altogether for a pack of crafty rascals, and you, who serve them, for a
parcel of hen-hearted numbskulls! They vilify us, the scoundrels do, when
there is the only difference that they rob the poor under cover of the
law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own
courage. Had you not better make one of us than sneak after these villains
for employment?"

Bellamy's fall came at last at the hands of a whaler captain. At the time
he was in command of the _Whidaw_ and a small fleet of other pirate craft,
which was lying at anchor in the Bay of Placentia in Newfoundland. Sailing
from Placentia for Nantucket Shoals, he seized a whaling vessel, the _Mary
Anne_. As the skipper of the whaler knew the coast well, Bellamy made him
pilot of his small fleet. The cunning skipper one night ran his ship on to
a sand-bank near Eastman, Massachusetts, and the rest of the fleet
followed his stern light on to the rocks. Almost all the crews perished,
only seven of the pirates being saved. These were seized and brought to
trial, condemned, and hanged at Boston in 1726. The days spent between the
sentence and the hanging were not wasted, for we read in a contemporary
account that "by the indefatigable pains of a pious and learned divine,
who constantly attended them, they were at length, by the special grace of
God, made sensible of and truly penitent for the enormous crimes they had
been guilty of."

BELVIN, JAMES.

Bo'son to Captain Gow, the pirate. He had the reputation of being a good
sailor but a bloodthirsty fellow. Was hanged at Wapping in June, 1725.

BEME, FRANCIS.

In 1539 this Baltic pirate was cruising off Antwerp, waiting to waylay
English merchant vessels.

BENDALL, GEORGE, or BENDEALL.

A flourishing pirate, whose headquarters, in the early eighteenth century,
were in New Providence Island.

In the year 1717, King George offered a free pardon to all freebooters who
would come in and give themselves up. But the call of the brotherhood was
too strong for a few of the "old hands," and Bendal