Quelch, the Boston pirate, had his sturdy protestants; so too did Major Bonnet, colleague of the infamous Blackbeard, and so did many other sea rogues. In truth, almost every instance of the sort exhibits the moral hardihood of an incorruptible minority. John Gow’s eight were delivered over to the rough abuse of Lieutenant Williams, who flogged them at will, and set men to keep them at work at the point of the cutlass. On them fell all the hard labor of the ship and they became the drudges of whatever roistering rascal chose to command them. At the same time, there is a final leniency about Gow’s treatment of this minority which lifts him from the charge of entirely purposeless ferocity. Purposeless ferocity is a tradition of piracy, but a curious thing is that not one of the pirates, of the major type, whose crimes were afterwards subjected to judicial examination, is particularly marked with a simple lust of cruelty. Tales of brutality abound concerning ruffians like Lafitte, England, Low, Lewis, Rackam and the rest of the roguish gallery, which may or may not be true. The same stories circulated about Kidd, Quelch, Avery and Gow, but when compared with the judicial records, the source alone of this series of pirate tales, of the activities of these last-named men, merely wanton cruelty is notably missing. On the contrary, in not a few cases there is a surprising magnanimity manifested by men of undoubtedly criminal disposition. Lives were taken in the actual capture of ships, but when the pirates gained possession there is no judicial record of plank-walking or other inhuman treatment. More often than not, the pirate chief recruited new hands from among the captives, though apparently without compulsion, and those that refused to join the black flag were commonly allowed to return to their ship and go their way. Plunder was the chief quest of the pirates, and that obtained their interest in ships or men ceased. If the pirate coveted the ship for his own use, he generally disposed of its crew by signing on those who would and putting ashore those who would not. Not that he was a tender chap--he could be very frightful where he conceived his profit required violence--but merely sportive torture was not a characteristic of those remembered in the only authentic sources of the subject,--the printed trials of the pirates. If this is true of those of whom we have definite information, it follows that the sanguinary accounts of those who never came to trial must be considerably thinned out by doubt.