She looked in this array so spirited and graceful, that her bare aspect was enough to make the men, as they entered, stop short and gaze upon her with wonder and awe. "I, who had been looking on for some time from our own vessel, now came on board the other, to see better what was going on. I arrived just in time to hear her saying to my men, 'I can well suppose, O soldiers, that the sight of this little army of women rather inspires you with wonder than with fear. As for us, after the vengeance we have taken for our wrongs, nothing can ever excite fear in us again. Attack us, if ye are thirsting for blood, and shed ours; we freely give our lives so that we preserve our honour. I am Sulpicia, the niece of Cratilio, king of Lithuania; my uncle gave me in marriage to the great Lampidio, as noble in lineage as he was rich in the gifts of nature and fortune. We were going to visit the king, my uncle, secure, as we imagined, among our own vassals and servants, all of whom were beholden to us for some act of kindness or other with which we were constantly loading them, but all these obligations were forgotten. One night, after they had drunk deeply, although half stupified by wine, they dared to lay their wicked hands on my husband, and deprived him of life, as the first beginning of their abominable designs; but we resolved to defend ourselves, and at least not to die unavenged. Availing ourselves of the state of drunkenness they were in, and the little sense they had left, we armed ourselves as well as we could, and with the help of four servants, who remained true to us, and had not joined the guilty conspiracy, we performed the work of death which you have witnessed on the deck, and carrying our vengeance further, we made the masts and rigging bear the fruit which you now behold hanging thereon. Forty men are strangled there, and if there had been forty thousand they would have shared the same fate, so weak were they and unable to defend themselves, so fierce in our wrath were we. I possess riches, which I can distribute among you, although, perhaps, I might rather say, that you can take them. I will only add that I give them up to you willingly; take them, gentlemen, and do not molest us.' "Even if I had been a real pirate, the words of Sulpicia would have softened my heart; one of my fishermen said, 'May I die if here is not another King Leopold offering riches to us, with whom our noble captain may show his high breeding. Look you, my lord Periander, the lady Sulpicia may go free, we ask no more than the glory of having conquered our selfish desires.' "'And so it shall be, my friends,' I replied, 'since you desire it, and I truly believe that Heaven never lets such acts go unrewarded, any more than it surely punishes the deeds that are evil: now clear this bad fruit from the rigging, and clean this deck, and then offer with their liberty your services to these ladies.'