Pirate tales from the lawHarris, Arthur M. (Arthur Merton)
History
Pirate tales from the law
Harris, Arthur M. (Arthur Merton)
Pirates
After a considerable wait, the tavern door opened and Mr. Fea stepped
forth,--and with him was only the boatswain. The boatswain wanted to
take his host’s arm in the most friendly manner, but Mr. Fea adroitly
disentangled himself; it was no part of his plan to be thus cuddled.
Having no use for his rejected arm, the boatswain decided to carry
a pistol in each hand, remarking that after all they were his best
friends. Mr. Fea thought he was very careless in the way he swung the
weapons around, in gestures and for the purpose of punctuating his
vigorous conversation.
At a dark and hedge-lined part of the road, the boatswain was just
indicating, with a very free gesticulation, how to repulse an enemy at
one’s bulwarks, when something--probably a heavenly meteor--struck him
suddenly from behind, and down he went on the flat of his back, the
pistols clattered from his hands, and the meteor, or whatever it was,
was poking a handkerchief a lot farther down his throat than he thought
necessary for the purpose of preventing speech. Before the fog from his
brain could lift, he was bound, hand and foot, until he was as inert as
an Egyptian mummy.
The attackers left one man to guard their first capture and stole back
to the tavern for the big job. There were two doors to the room where
Gow’s men were having their little party, at each of which Mr. Fea
placed a group of men, who, at a signal, broke in on both sides and
covered the pirates with their muskets before the besieged could pull a
dirk or raise a cutlass.
Law and order now had five out of twenty-eight men, but rather
disappointingly for our interest, the record thus concludes:
“At length, by an equal exertion of courage and artifice, Mr. Fea
captured these dangerous men, twenty-eight in number, without a single
man being killed or wounded; and only with the aid of a few countrymen.”
And among the captives was old schoolmate John Gow.
Happily, for every Gow there is a Fea.
The _Revenge_ was seized by the government, and the pirates sent to
Edinburgh under a military guard which came to Calf Sound for that
purpose. At Edinburgh they were ironed aboard the frigate, _Greyhound_,
which brought them down to London and the court of admiralty which was
waiting there to try them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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