Fanny Campbell, The Female Pirate Captain: A Tale of The Revolution

by Maturin M. Ballou

‘I don’t know, dearest, in olden times, and indeed till quite lately, this island has been the very rendezvous of lawless and wicked characters.’

At this moment a man rushed from a thicket and presented a pistol at Lovell.

‘What would you have of me,’ he asked.

‘Hand over the money then, and go on your way,’ said the robber, approaching to the steps of the vehicle as if to receive it.

Lovell waited until he was fairly within reach, when he threw himself from his position with the whole weight of his body full upon the robber, bearing him suddenly to the ground. As he fell, however, he discharged his pistol, but it went wide of its air as regarded Lovell, just grazing Fanny’s head, which together with the report, it being so very close to her head, and pointed directly at her, stunned her so as to render her insensible for some time.

The struggle between Lovell and the robber was but for a moment. The powerful frame of the former was too much for his adversary who stunned and bleeding from his fall, was soon senseless. Lovell was a person of a peculiar temperament; he was not one to let off an offender in any case when he could mete out to him his due.—Therefore after reviving Fanny and convincing himself that she was not seriously hurt, he bound the still senseless robber head and foot, and threw him into the back part of the vehicle, a sort of waggon in which they rode, and then hastened on happy to find a shelter.

This he soon met with in the shape of a neat and comfortable cottage, where he found no trouble in obtaining assistance and such accommodation as he so much needed. Fanny was kindly attended by the good woman of the house, who said her husband would be home soon, that he was a fisherman and had not yet got home from a two days cruise. Lovell had the robber also cared for, and found on examination that he was injured even more seriously than he had at first supposed, his head having received a severe contusion in the fall. He dressed his wounds himself, being somewhat versed in such matters, and left him to rest until morning.

Fanny soon recovered from her slight injury; indeed the very next morning she was down in the lower room of the cottage surrounded by the rosy cheeked children and grown up boys, who called the matron mother, and this their home. The thrift and industry that reigned there struck Lovell and his wife with great interest, for it was remarkable. The children, five in number, were cloathed coarsely but with the utmost neatness, and the rooms were the very picture of cleanliness and good order. It was apparently, and indeed so the good mother had intimated relative to her husband’s occupation, a fisherman’s cottage; but Fanny said to her husband, ‘where can true content and happiness be found if not in such circumstances as these.’

The husband and father had not yet returned though it was afternoon of the subsequent day on which they had arrived at the cottage. Fanny was evidently well enough to leave, but Lovell was anxious to see the father of these bright eyed and rosy cheeked children, and to recompense him in some degree for the hospitality they had enjoyed under his happy roof. And in addition to this inducement to stop still longer, the robber whom he had secured, and who now lay unable to move in one of the apartments of the house, was pronounced by the physician whose services had been procured at an outlay of no little trouble from a great distance, to be dying, and Lovell wanted to see the matter at an end, either as to his probable recovery, or proper attention paid to him when deceased.—Several of the neighbors, who were but few, had called to see him, but none could recognize him, and it was very evident that he was a stranger in the neighborhood.—From him there could be no intelligence gained, for he had few lucid moments, his injuries being mainly upon the brain.

At last in one of those intervals of reason, when Lovell stood by his side he looked at him and recognizing him, said: ‘I have wronged you—forgive me. I have been driven step by step to this act, it was my first—but did I not hear a voice with you that I knew? It sounded very familiar, and brought back the remembrance of years long past.’