"Judge: 'D'ye hear how the Scoundrel prates?... What have we to do with the Reason?... I'd have you to know, Raskal, we don't sit here to hear Reason ... we go according to Law.... Is our Dinner ready?'
"Attor. Gen.: 'Yes, my Lord.'
"Judge: 'Then heark'ee you Raskal at the Bar; hear me, Sirrah, hear me.... You must suffer, for three reasons; first, because it is not fit I should sit here as Judge, and no Body be hanged.... Secondly, you must be hanged, because you have a damn'd hanging Look.... And thirdly, you must be hanged, because I am hungry; for, know, Sirrah, that 'tis a Custom, that whenever the Judge's Dinner is ready before the Tryal is over, the Prisoner is to be hanged of Course.... There's Law for you, ye Dog.... So take him away Gaoler.'"
In August, 1722, the pirates sailed out from their hiding-place and waylaid the ship which was returning to Jamaica with the answer to the petition, but to their disappointment heard that no notice had been taken of their round-robin by the Government at home.
No time was lost in returning to their old ways, for the very next day both pirate ships left their hiding-place and sailed out on the "grand account."
But now their luck deserted them, for the Morning Star was run aground on a reef by gross neglect on the part of the officers and wrecked. Most of the crew escaped on to an island, where Captain Anstis found them next day, and no sooner had he taken aboard Captain Fenn, Phillips, the carpenter, and a few others, than all of a sudden down upon them came two men-of-war, the Hector and the Adventure, so that Anstis had barely time to cut his cables and get away to sea, hotly pursued by the Adventure. The latter, in a stiff breeze, was slowly gaining on the brigantine when all of a sudden the wind dropped, the pirates got out the sweeps, and thus managed, for the time being, to escape. In the meantime the Hector took prisoner the forty pirates remaining on the island.
Anstis soon got to work again, and captured several prizes. He then sailed to the Island of Tobago to clean and refit his ship. Just when all the guns and stores had been landed and the ship heeled, as ill-luck would have it, the Winchester, man-of-war, put into the bay; and the pirates had barely time to set their ship on fire and to escape into the woods. Anstis had by now lost all authority over his discontented crew, and one night was shot while asleep in his hammock.
ANTONIO.
Captain of the Darien Indians and friend to the English buccaneers.
ARCHER, John Rose.