Pirate tales from the law

by Arthur M. Harris

As Mr. Fea passed into the public room again, the keeper and his wife met him with upraised hands and faces of silent consternation. He smiled reassuringly, pushed open the door, upon which a roar of strange sea songs came tumultuously from the inside accompanied with the clanging of cutlasses marking time to the voices. Very coolly he resumed his place at the presidency of the revels, where he directed the increasing bubble of strong Scotch whiskey, varied with the husky smuggled French brandy, until, to his obvious annoyance, he was again interrupted by a call to the outside.

Tam and Donald had done their task. Pulling them aside from the yellow squares of light which shone from the boisterous inn, Mr. Fea now bade them assemble six men, well armed, place them behind the hedges and carefully remember to do one of two things: if Mr. Fea came from the tavern accompanied only by the boatswain, the ambush was to seize the boatswain; but if he came with the whole crew, he would walk a little forward of the company, upon whom the watchers were then to open fire.

After a considerable wait, the tavern door opened and Mr. Fea stepped forth,—and with him was only the boatswain. The boatswain wanted to take his host’s arm in the most friendly manner, but Mr. Fea adroitly disentangled himself; it was no part of his plan to be thus cuddled. Having no use for his rejected arm, the boatswain decided to carry a pistol in each hand, remarking that after all they were his best friends. Mr. Fea thought he was very careless in the way he swung the weapons around, in gestures and for the purpose of punctuating his vigorous conversation.

At a dark and hedge-lined part of the road, the boatswain was just indicating, with a very free gesticulation, how to repulse an enemy at one’s bulwarks, when something—probably a heavenly meteor—struck him suddenly from behind, and down he went on the flat of his back, the pistols clattered from his hands, and the meteor, or whatever it was, was poking a handkerchief a lot farther down his throat than he thought necessary for the purpose of preventing speech. Before the fog from his brain could lift, he was bound, hand and foot, until he was as inert as an Egyptian mummy.

The attackers left one man to guard their first capture and stole back to the tavern for the big job. There were two doors to the room where Gow’s men were having their little party, at each of which Mr. Fea placed a group of men, who, at a signal, broke in on both sides and covered the pirates with their muskets before the besieged could pull a dirk or raise a cutlass.

Law and order now had five out of twenty-eight men, but rather disappointingly for our interest, the record thus concludes:

“At length, by an equal exertion of courage and artifice, Mr. Fea captured these dangerous men, twenty-eight in number, without a single man being killed or wounded; and only with the aid of a few countrymen.”

And among the captives was old schoolmate John Gow.

Happily, for every Gow there is a Fea.

The Revenge was seized by the government, and the pirates sent to Edinburgh under a military guard which came to Calf Sound for that purpose. At Edinburgh they were ironed aboard the frigate, Greyhound, which brought them down to London and the court of admiralty which was waiting there to try them.