Maurice Fitzgerald, I have said, was a brave man. He could have faced death upon the blood-stained deck, and gloriously braved the brunt of battle, but now he felt his strength depart, and retiring suddenly to his room, burst into a flood of tears. After a few moments, his moral courage returned. “I have merited this,” said he, “by acceding to her girlish whims. I must now make the best of a bad matter, and trust to fortune for success.” He now proceeded to act in a calm manner. He wrote a hasty note to Col. Howard, detailing the circumstances of the case as they occurred, and sending his formal respects to Mary. He wrote a line to his aged father, of the same character, and furthermore stated his intention of joining his vessel by the aid of a pilot boat. Having paid his bill, he sold a check upon his banker, purchased a sea-cloak and a brace of pistols, and with his valise in his hand, boarded a fast sailing pilot, at Beckman’s Slip. A bargain was soon struck, and the light craft, with Fitzgerald at the helm, turned her head to the sea. On the way down, they met the pilot who had taken the frigate to sea, and ascertained her course. Trusting, then, to the swiftness of the boat, that had several days provision on board, the young officer boldly steered for the Atlantic, and when the sun set, the highlands of Neversink were astern. During the night, which continued wet and gloomy, the wind, in fitful puffs, hurled them swiftly o’er the waves, and, when the morning came, the long, swelling billows of the ocean tumbled o’er them, and the sheer-water darted ahead along the thunder-chaunting waves. Nothing was to be seen but the clouds above, and the gloomy waves below, which came together at the edge of the horizon like the lid and bottom of a circular tobacco box, when closed. The old pilot was now confident that the frigate had changed her course during the evening preceding, and that all possibility of his overtaking her was gone. With a heavy heart, therefore, Fitzgerald put his helm down, the tacks and sheets were shifted, the snowy canvass felt again the side-long breath of the gale, and the little bark drew in toward the distant shore. A suspicious looking schooner now hove in sight, and bore down upon them with the swiftness of the wind. The pilot, from the first, did not like her appearance, and Fitzgerald, although he said nothing to alarm his companion, felt confident that she was a pirate. In less than an hour, the warlike stranger shot across their bows, fired a gun, loaded with grape, at their sails, and hoisted the black flag of the Bucaniers.