Howard came up among them slowly, under shortened sail, and as he concealed his men and kept his ports closed, they took him for an English East-Indiaman and suffered him to approach. Howard suddenly attacked the largest vessel, and after a desperate fight, in which he lost thirty men, carried her by boarding. On this vessel was a nobleman belonging to the court of the Great Mogul. The prize itself was immensely valuable, and the nobleman’s ransom amounted to twenty thousand pounds, so by this time Howard’s fortune was well assured. He then ran down to Malabar, where he met Bowen and his prize, a fine, stout ship of sixty guns. The two captains with their quartermasters held a consultation (on the night of their meeting) in the cabin of the _Speedy Return_, and their future plans were decided upon over a rich banquet provided from the stores of the prizes. The _Prosperous_ they sank and the _Speedy Return_ they burned, and in Bowen’s prize they continued their depredations, the two crews being joined together. This made Howard’s ninth change of vessels since he had taken to piracy. As they cruised down the coast of Madagascar they came in sight of Howard’s old haven, where he had buried his treasure. He became seized with a desire for shore life, and with those of his men who had lived there before with him, and with their share of the recent booty, he went back to his old stamping-ground to settle down. He was received with open arms by his old friends among the natives; he married a Malagasy woman, and for a long time lived quietly and peaceably, shooting, fishing, watching his herds, and cultivating his fields. A missionary who was shipwrecked on the coast about a year after Howard’s return worked on the pirate’s soft heart so successfully that before being taken home on a trading-vessel that put in for water he had brought the gallant buccaneer into the close folds of the Roman Catholic Church and to a full realization of his unusually sinful state. After the missionary’s departure Howard missed the theological discourse and dispute that had whiled away many a tropic twilight, and he knew not where to turn for an outlet of his intellectual activities. Finally the bright idea struck him that it would be both pleasing and beneficial to evangelize the natives. In a fit of religious enthusiasm he proceeded to this work with his usual prodigal hand. Unfortunately for himself, he used a club in the process, and this, coupled with his brutal treatment of his wife, made him unpopular among the Malagasy. One night the docile aborigines fell upon him while he was asleep in his hammock, and left mementos of their presence in the shape of thirty-seven assagais stuck decoratively in various parts of his body. When found he was very dead, and thus terminated the earthly career of a treacherous and unworthy ruffian, whose only claims to our consideration were his good seamanship and Anglo-Saxon pluck. XI TEW, OF RHODE ISLAND