Pirate tales from the law

by Arthur M. Harris

But that ship, alas, was not in the harbor. They huddled together and stared first at the vacant harbor and then at each other. Marooned, by tar!

They tacked back to Jack Avery’s, but that gentleman’s shrewish wife met them at the door with the sharp refusal of even a poor night’s lodging in the stable. Little Harry, in the prettiest way, interceded for these interesting strangers, but in vain; they had to warm themselves as best they might by stamping through the town the whole night long.

With the morning, however, the Revenge came back, and the boatswain led his now embittered flock to the waterside. On their way they were met by little Harry Avery, nimble and frolicsome as ever. He followed them to the boat which had put off from the ship to fetch them, and wished loudly that he might go aboard and away with them.

Whereupon the boatswain had a happy thought. Pushing back his three-cornered hat, he scratched his mahogany forehead in deep reflection. Why not take the boy aboard and thus get even with the hard-hearted Mrs. Avery? Everybody roared with glee when this scheme of revenge was broached. Harry was pulled by a great fist into the boat, and his sea adventures were begun.

Safely on their way to the American plantations and well out of sight of land, the boatswain produced his kidnapped pal, who apparently accounted the whole thing the very best joke in the world. For a moment the captain glowered down on his peculiar passenger; but when Harry showed how he could roll out two oaths to the boatswain’s one, his fare was paid, and the captain looked upon him almost with affection.

So bright a little blackguard was Harry that he stole more and more into the grim captain’s heart and twined his wicked little fingers still more firmly about the skipper’s starved emotions. A tiny hammock was made for him close by the captain’s bunk; he was allowed the run of the ship, and the cook was admonished to keep for him the least weevily or oaken portions of the menu. It was a charming sight to see the small chap, perched on a coil of rope, in blasphemous competition with the admiring skipper.

There is no telling how far this friendship might have gone, or whether the captain of the Revenge might not even have adopted him for his own son, had not an incident, as they neared Carolina, severed the comradeship sharply in two. Harry was caught in the act of putting a lighted match to the powder magazine; just an inch more and the ship would have been nothing but a few broken spars and gratings drifting haphazardly upon the sands of the Carolina beach.

The captain turned nasty right away. He banished his little pet into the hold, down among the bilge and the rats, and kept him there till they made port. Rather unkindly he gave the boy to a Carolina planter,—unkindly, of course, not to the boy.

It took the planter three years—for he was a man of monumental patience—fully to realize the nature of the gift; and as he could not wish Harry off on anybody in the colony, the boy’s talents being pretty commonly known, he did the best thing he could and sent him back to England.

Old Jack Avery had died soon after the boy’s leaving England,—some said of a broken heart. What contact Harry made with his mother is not recorded, but it has become a matter of history that young Avery grew up a rogue, and at length, finding the land too hot for him, sought the cool and obscure promenades of his first element,—the sea.