CHAPTER XIII.

_Anne Bonny, the Female Pirate._

Rackam the Pirate.--Anne Bonny his Wife.--Reasons for Assuming a Boy’s Dress.--Infamous Character of Rackam.--Anne falls in Love with Mary.--Curious Complications.--The Duel.--Chivalry of Frank.--The Capture.--The Trial.--Testimony of the Artist.--Death of Mary Read.--Rackam Dies on the Scaffold.

There was upon the island of New Providence, at that time, a very consummate villain by the name of Rackam. He had been captain of a pirate ship, and shared his cabin with his wife, a very depraved woman, who was disguised in boy’s clothes. She apparently discharged the duties of a cabin-boy. This Captain Rackam had taken advantage of the king’s proclamation, had surrendered himself as a pirate, and had received a pardon.

Eagerly he enlisted, with his wife in man’s garb, as a messmate, in one of the governor’s privateers. No one on board the ship was aware of the sex of his companion. She was truly his wife, and her real name was Anne Bonny. She had been a rude, ungovernable girl, and her parents were so displeased that she should have married such a worthless wretch as Rackam was known to be, that they would no longer recognize her. Having nothing to live upon, she assumed a sailor’s dress, and they both shipped for New Providence. He doubtless intended there to resume the career of a pirate.

Rackam and Anne Bonny enlisted on board the same ship. Here then there were two women in male attire, neither of whom had any suspicion of the real sex of the other. No one could associate with such companions as those of Mary Read, or encounter the influences to which she was constantly exposed, without becoming in some degree corrupted.

The privateersman had been out but a few days when Rackam, who had many of his old confederates on board, formed a conspiracy, rose upon the officers, set them adrift, seized the ship, and turned to his old trade. Mary Read, in the character of Frank, was, as we have mentioned, a very handsome young fellow. The captain’s cabin-boy, Anne Bonney, fell desperately in love with Frank, and revealed to _him_, as she supposed, her sex. She approached Frank with all the seductions and allurements with which Potiphar’s wife solicited Joseph. Thus importuned, Frank confided to her that she was also a woman in disguise. This led to increased intimacy between the two young sailor women.

Captain Rackam became intensely jealous of his wife, in consequence of her familiarity with Frank. He threatened Anne that he would certainly cut Frank’s throat. Anne, well aware of the desperate character of the pirate, felt constrained, that she might save Mary’s life, to let the captain into the secret also. He did not divulge it, knowing that she might be exposed to very cruel treatment from the unprincipled wretches who thronged his decks.

But again the all-devouring passion took possession of the bosom of Frank. Many vessels were captured. After being plundered they were generally turned adrift again, with their crews. If the pirates, however, found on board these ships any one who could be of use to them, he was detained on board their ship. It so chanced that one day they took a ship where there was a young English artist. Rackam, thinking that the artist might be of service to him, in sketching scenes and drawing charts, detained him as a captive. He was a genteel young fellow, handsome, of fascinating manners, very skilful with his pencil, and possessed of very attractive conversational powers. Frank and the young artist were instinctively drawn toward each other.

And when Frank told her companion that she loathed the life of a pirate, that she was one of the crew by compulsion, and that she should embrace the first possible opportunity to escape, a new bond of union was formed between them. They became messmates, and were always together. He never had a doubt that the masculine pronoun, _he_, belonged to his bronzed but smooth-cheeked and soft-voiced companion.

Even on board a pirate ship there are many opportunities for seclusion. In the dark and tempestuous night, when the wine-heated officers were carousing in the cabin, and the crew were rioting in the forecastle, Frank and the artist, wrapped in those thick sailor-jackets which defy both wind and rain, would seek some retired position upon the deck, beneath the stormy sky, and beguile the weary hours in relating to each other the story of the past, and in planning measures for escape. Frank was the younger of the two, and in these hours of midnight communings, loved to recline with her head in the lap of her unsuspecting comrade.

The inevitable result ensued. The whole passionate nature of the woman, still almost in her girlhood, became aglow with love of the young artist. In one of these midnight communings she revealed to her astonished friend her sex. His friendship was speedily converted into impassioned love. He had ever, under her assumed character, had occasion to respect her. He could not recall a single action of immodesty or impropriety. Alone in the darkness of the night, upon the solitary deck with the stars alone looking down upon them, they went through the ceremony of what they both deemed a secret _marriage_.

Mary Read ever averred that she regarded those nuptials as sacred as if the rite had been performed in the church, by the robed priest, and in the presence of any number of witnesses. She was never accused of being unfaithful to her marriage vows, or of ever having been even indiscreet in her conduct.

Still the months passed away. The ship continued its piratic cruise. Frank, though secretly the wife of the artist, had excited no suspicion of her disguise. In her sailor’s garb she still performed every duty imposed upon others of the crew. There were several bloody actions fought. In these engagements both she and Anne Bonny were called upon, like the rest, to work at the guns.

It was one of the laws of the ship, that if any quarrel arose between any two of the crew, there should be no contention on board the ship, but that when they next approached an island, they should, with their friends, land in a boat, and settle the quarrel in a duel on the shore. The artist was so grossly incited by one of the pirates, that he either challenged him, or accepted a challenge from him to fight a duel. Frank would not have had her husband, on any account, refuse the hostile meeting. Public sentiment was such among the pirates, that had he done this, there would have been no end to the insults and abuse he would have received as a reward.

Frank was in a state of great agitation and anxiety for the fate of her lover. She was an admirable swordsman, and no one of the piratic crew was a truer shot with the pistol. Her love was so passionate that she felt that she could not live without that husband, whose union with her was so enhanced by the attractions which secrecy and romance give. She was far more ready to peril her own life than to have his endangered.

She therefore deliberately provoked such a quarrel with the pirate who was soon to have a hostile meeting with her husband, as to compel him to an immediate and angry challenge. Adroitly she succeeded in having the time appointed for their meeting two hours before the duel was to be fought with her husband. In her intensely excited frame of mind she resolved to make sure work of it.

They were to meet at but a few paces distance, discharge their pistols at each other, and then, with drawn swords, advance and fight until one or the other was effectually disabled or killed. The pistols were discharged. Neither of them was seriously wounded. They then crossed swords. There was a fierce clashing of the weapons for a few minutes and then the agile Frank passed her sword through the body of her adversary, and he fell before her a bloody corpse.

Such rencontres were too common with that ship’s crew, and Frank had been too conversant all her days with such scenes of blood to have it produce any serious impression upon her mind. With much composure she wiped her crimsoned sword and returned to the ship, exulting in the thought that she had saved her husband’s life. The attachment between Frank and her lover before this seems to have been very strong. But this event bound them more firmly together than ever before.

Almost invariably, even in this world, retribution follows crime. After many successful captures, and much rioting and revelry with this godless crew, the hour of vengeance came. One day a swift-sailing English frigate, of powerful armament, caught sight of the pirate and gave chase. The vessel was overtaken and captured, and all her crew, in irons, were carried to England for trial. There was no disposition to deal tenderly with these wretches, whose crimes could scarcely be numbered. The trial was expeditious and the execution prompt. The young artist easily proved that he was a prisoner on board the ship, and had never taken any part in their piratic exploits. He was promptly released. Frank was one of the pirates. Her assertion that she was reluctantly so, was of no avail. She had been of their recognized number; she had been identified with them in all the employments of a sailor; she had taken an active part in their battles.

One of the witnesses, who had been taken a prisoner by Rackam, and detained for some time on board the pirates’ craft, gave the following testimony against Frank, or rather against Mary Read; for during the trial her sex had been divulged, and the embarrassing fact had been discovered that, ere long, she was to become a mother. The testimony was as follows:

“I was taken prisoner by Rackam, and was detained for some time on board the pirate ship. One day I accidentally fell into discourse with the prisoner at the bar. She was dressed like the ordinary seamen, and I did not suppose her to be anything different. Taking her for a young man, I asked her what pleasure she could find in such enterprises, where her life was continually in danger by fire or sword; and not only so, but she must be sure of dying an ignominious death if she should be taken alive?

“She replied, that as to hanging, she deemed it no great hardship; for were it not for that, every cowardly fellow would turn pirate, and so infest the seas that men of courage must starve. She said that were it put to the choice of the pirates, they would not have the punishment less than death; for it was only the fear of death which kept many dastardly rogues honest. Many of those, she said, who are now cheating the widows and orphans, and oppressing their poor neighbors who have no money to obtain justice, would then rob at sea. Thus the ocean would be crowded with rogues like the land. No merchant would venture out. Trade in a little time would not be worth following. It is the fear of hanging alone which restrains thousands from piracy.”

When we consider the impossibility of making an exact report of conversation, and when we consider the situation of Frank among the pirates, and that her life would instantly have been forfeited if they had suspected her of unfaithfulness, we can imagine that essentially these remarks might have been made, without indicating any special moral delinquency. Frank did not deny having made them.

Several of the crew, however, brought forward much more damaging testimony. When, to the astonishment of all, the sex both of Mary Read and Anne Bonny was made known to the court, the pirates seemed very desirous that their fate should be inseparably connected with their own. The testimony against Anne Bonny was very strong. She had accompanied her infamous husband in most of his adventures, and had rendered herself very conspicuous by her courage and her energetic action.

When the frigate took the pirate there was a short conflict. But the great guns of the frigate swept the pirate’s deck with such a storm of grape-shot, that every one rushed into the hold, excepting Mary Read and Anne Bonny. Mary Read, it was said, called upon those under the deck to come up and fight like men. As they refused, in her rage she fired her pistol down among them, killing one and wounding others. This latter charge, which went far to condemn her, she utterly denied. Such bravado was not at all in accordance with her general character. But it was just the conduct to be expected of Anne Bonny. She was a desperado, as robust in person as she was masculine in character. Rumor said that before she entered upon her piratic career she stabbed a servant-maid with a carving-knife, and so severely beat a young fellow whom she disliked that he narrowly escaped with his life.

They were both pronounced guilty of piracy, and condemned to be hung. As it was not deemed right that Mary Read’s child should forfeit its life in consequence of its mother’s sins, Mary was allowed a reprieve, until after the birth of her child. Being remanded to her gloomy and solitary cell in Newgate prison, she awaited, with anguish, her approaching maternity, to be immediately followed by an ignominious death upon the scaffold. The horror of her situation threw her into a fever, of which she fortunately died. Thus she escaped the scaffold: and she and her unborn babe slept in the grave together.

Rackam was hanged just before the time appointed for the execution of his wife. The morning on which he was led to the scaffold, he was first conducted to the cell of Anne Bonny. Her characteristic speech to him was:

“I am sorry to see you here; but if you had fought like a man, you need not have been hanged like a dog.”

In an hour from that time he was struggling in death’s agonies. Anne was reprieved from time to time, and finally escaped execution. What at last became of her no one knows.