Somehow the rogue lived,--lived until another ship was captured, or, more probably, simply detained, for, after appropriating a few portable valuables, Gow, with the consent of the crew of the _Revenge_, put Lieutenant Williams aboard the stranger with sharp admonition to the surprised skipper to keep him in close ward until the first English man-of-war was met, to which he was to be delivered as a wicked pirate for yard-arm bunting. Simply speechless with astonished rage, Mr. Williams was slung aboard. But he was only one of many who had to learn that, above all things, pirates loved their little jokes, especially some delicate impertinence like this to constituted authority. VI The ship seemed awfully quiet after the roaring Williams had gone. Something was missing, but what it was they did not just know. Unsuspectingly, the grim jest of sending Williams home to the gallows had removed the heart of the piratical enterprise. If the _Revenge_ expected to keep on the grand account, fellows like Williams, who could do the rough work, were essential, and without him the great affair threatened to simmer back to the status of a mere mutiny. Then, too, the presence of the warship, with its promise of hundreds of pounds of hot lead and forest of cutlasses, awakened unhappy perturbation, and stirred even sluggish imaginations with pictures of uncomfortable events. The lads pensively stared at their finger nails and realized only one insistent fact,--that they must depart the region forthwith. Some kind of retreat began to be openly proposed, but just whither; that was the vexing thing. At this point John Gow forfeits a place in the first rank of pirates for he shows that he did not know the fine points of the game. He is now not far from the place where Henry Avery, some years before, had stolen the _Charles the Second_, a ship on which he was mate, and, with his exploiting of a discontented crew, was in circumstances very similar to those now surrounding Gow. Avery, it may be remembered, came first of all to the Madeiras, but the point of separation between him and Gow is that Avery knew that the local coast was not the most advantageous place for piracy, knew that the jeweled Indies was, and set his unswerving prow resolutely thither.