Mr. May’s narrative cannot give us that information because Mr. May never saw his captain after they separated in the West Indies. At the turn of the new century, we know he was still in the black books of the British Admiralty, for an Act of Grace—that is a blanket pardon to all pirates who should give up their wicked ways by such and such a date—issued a few years after Mr. May’s demise, specifically excepts from its clement scope, “William Kidd and Henry Every, alias Bridgman.”
Now, a yarn is told of the end of Henry Avery, which may be summarized for what it is worth—probably not very much—for it is outside of judicial records and consequently corrupted by legend. The effect of it is that Avery continued in the West Indies, pirating the Spanish Main, even to the Carolinas, until, satisfied that he had finally earned a competence and an honorable retirement and with something of that longing for home which is not altogether absent, apparently, from even a pirate’s tattooed bosom, he decided to turn him again home.
He had an embarrassment of riches, if ever a man had. According to the story, he had bags of diamonds taken from the Gunsway, of fabulous value. Mr. May’s trial suggests that the loot of that ship was money, and nobody says anything about diamonds, but the historian we are now, with a caution, quoting says it was diamonds, and diamonds it shall be.
In due time, he got back to Bristol, but now found that he could not sell his diamonds without incurring suspicion as an evil-doer. He tried Ireland, as a place where folks might be less shrewdly curious, but he discovered that the Irish were as much struck as the English by the incongruity, say, of an egg-sized diamond flashing and coruscating in a scarred and pitchy palm,—a feeling not immediately dispelled by the extraordinarily sinister face above them.
Back to England—truly a millionaire tramp—where he foolishly resolved to put his trust in merchants. Behind their aldermanic robes and unimpeachable integrity, he expected to be able to put his unique stock-in-trade on the market, which, indeed, he seems to have done, but when he solicited his corpulent agents for an accounting he was met by great round eyes and insulted mouths.
“Diamonds? What are you talking about? Diamonds? Begone, you rogue, what do we know of diamonds.”
It sounds like some aspects of human nature, but whether it is history, is not for us to vouch.
So Henry stewed a trip or two in a coasting forecastle,—where, had he a mind to, he could have told the simple seamen a thrilling story of the sea,—and then curled up and died, “not worth a groat.”
Morally, at any rate.