Several of the crew, however, brought forward much more damaging testimony. When, to the astonishment of all, the sex both of Mary Read and Anne Bonny was made known to the court, the pirates seemed very desirous that their fate should be inseparably connected with their own. The testimony against Anne Bonny was very strong. She had accompanied her infamous husband in most of his adventures, and had rendered herself very conspicuous by her courage and her energetic action. When the frigate took the pirate there was a short conflict. But the great guns of the frigate swept the pirate’s deck with such a storm of grape-shot, that every one rushed into the hold, excepting Mary Read and Anne Bonny. Mary Read, it was said, called upon those under the deck to come up and fight like men. As they refused, in her rage she fired her pistol down among them, killing one and wounding others. This latter charge, which went far to condemn her, she utterly denied. Such bravado was not at all in accordance with her general character. But it was just the conduct to be expected of Anne Bonny. She was a desperado, as robust in person as she was masculine in character. Rumor said that before she entered upon her piratic career she stabbed a servant-maid with a carving-knife, and so severely beat a young fellow whom she disliked that he narrowly escaped with his life. They were both pronounced guilty of piracy, and condemned to be hung. As it was not deemed right that Mary Read’s child should forfeit its life in consequence of its mother’s sins, Mary was allowed a reprieve, until after the birth of her child. Being remanded to her gloomy and solitary cell in Newgate prison, she awaited, with anguish, her approaching maternity, to be immediately followed by an ignominious death upon the scaffold. The horror of her situation threw her into a fever, of which she fortunately died. Thus she escaped the scaffold: and she and her unborn babe slept in the grave together. Rackam was hanged just before the time appointed for the execution of his wife. The morning on which he was led to the scaffold, he was first conducted to the cell of Anne Bonny. Her characteristic speech to him was: “I am sorry to see you here; but if you had fought like a man, you need not have been hanged like a dog.” In an hour from that time he was struggling in death’s agonies. Anne was reprieved from time to time, and finally escaped execution. What at last became of her no one knows. CHAPTER XIV. _Sir Henry Morgan_