“Then Robert Tucker came to me, and told me I must go along with them. I told him I was not fit for their turn, neither were my inclinations that way. After that Major Bonnet himself came to me, and told me I must either go on a maroon shore” (no doubt with his usual little jest about the governorship) “or go along with them, for he designed to take the sloop (_Francis_) with him. “That evening between eight and nine we were ordered to set sail, but whither I knew not. So we sailed out that night, and I being weary with fatigue, went to sleep; and whether it was with a design or not I can not tell, but we fell to leeward of the _Revenge_ (_Royal James_); and in the morning Major Bonnet took the speaking trumpet, and told us if we did not keep closer he would fire in upon us and sink us. So then we proceeded on our voyage till we came to Cape Fear.” Thank you, Mr. Mate; you have given us an interesting and living picture of just how these wretches went about their dirty work. VI Cape Fear! When a “naval historian” tells us that the battle at Cape Fear was merely a matter of a few shots and a surrender, he not only understates the fact, but beclouds the due glory of a company of heroic men. Mr. S. C. Hughson, whose patient accuracy has given the complete story to the world, not only describes a serious engagement but shows that the result was so open a question that the pirates, during the fight, beckoned with their hats to their opponents in mock invitation to board and take them, in full confidence of victory. Cape Fear is on Smith Island, at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, on the coast of North Carolina, and between Charleston and Ocracoke Inlet. At New Inlet, where the river swims into the sea, it divides what are now called Brunswick and Hanover Counties. Shoal waters and sandy islets make the work of navigation here uncertain. Major Bonnet had made his sea-nest in this region, his knowledge of the channels and depths protecting his comings and goings. In this place he could repair and refit his ship as well as set up a sort of market for the purveying to the local folk his varied plunder. For the coastwise pirate, as distinguished from the pirate of the Kidd and Quelch school, was simply a smuggler who stole his wares, and if you hyphenate him thus, smuggler-pirate, you can separate him from the typical smuggler who acquires his contraband lawfully in a cheaper market to run it past the customs to a dearer market. It was to Cape Fear, then, that Bonnet came in the beginning of August with his ship and two captive sloops, one of them being the _Francis_, and it was here that toward the end of the next month Justice presented her bill to him at the point of a cannon.