Friends of piracy in general and the personal acquaintances of the enchained pirates in particular shared a common indignation. They must have been numerous, for they promised to liberate the prisoners or burn the city to the foundation blocks. Bonnet, as was fitting for a gentleman who happened to be a criminal, was locked up in the residence of the marshal, while the baser fellows were thrown into the watch-house, there being no jail in the town at that time. The fashion of the port went out to look at the ships. The _Henry_ was all knocked about, while the _Royal James_--whose name had been immediately changed back to _Revenge_ by a proper patriotic gesture--had not much more than a chipped hull. If the ships had not grounded as they did Bonnet would have been against overwhelming odds. The _Henry_ had eight guns and seventy men; the _Sea Nymph_ had the same number of cannon and sixty men. Bonnet fought with ten guns and about fifty men. But the sticking of the ships had made his chance more even, for in that situation he commanded two more guns than did Rhett, and the latter’s slight excess of men was more than canceled by the bad slant of his deck, with its consequent openness to the enemy’s cannonade. Before the trouble in town could blaze into tumult, the pirates were put to trial in the Vice-Admiralty Court, presided over by Judge Trott. Bonnet, however, did not stand among them; by bribing with a free palm he had escaped and was at that moment fleeing up the coast in a small boat, to the great scandal of all lovers of good government. The trial was brief and characteristic of the times. The defendants, without counsel as was usual, feebly pleaded that Bonnet had deceived them at Topsail Inlet into sailing with him. Ignatius Pell, boatswain of the _Royal James_, turned state’s evidence, and other witnesses were Mr. Killing, whom we have quoted, and the captain of the _Francis_ and the captain of the _Fortune_. There could not be a doubt of their guilt and in that age not a doubt of their fate; they were sentenced to be hanged by a judge who preached at and denounced them in the vigorous fashion of the Elizabethan courts. In less than one week all but three or four who had proved compulsory service were executed at old White Point, near the present beautiful promenade. One cheerful ray lightened the black misery of their situation: Stede Bonnet was recaptured. “He was the great ringleader of them,” said the prosecuting attorney, “who had seduced many poor, ignorant men to follow his course of living, and ruined many poor wretches; some of whom lately suffered, who with their last breath expressed a great satisfaction at the prisoner’s (Bonnet) being apprehended, and charged the ruin of themselves and loss of their lives entirely upon him.”