Excessively annoyed, Captain Davis closed in, and soon found that he had a hard nut to crack. With thirty guns and ninety men the Dutchman stood him off, and they fought a stubbornly heroic sea action that lasted from one o’clock at noon until after daylight next morning, occasionally hauling off for rest and repairs and tackling each other again, hammer and tongs. Finally the Dutchman had to strike, for he was outfought by men better drilled and practised. Captain Davis respected their valor, and there was no mention of making them walk the plank. The fifty survivors were taken aboard his own ship to save their lives, for their own ship was so smashed and splintered that she sank soon after.
Reaching Sierra Leone, Captain Davis invited Captain Snelgrave aboard for supper in order to learn how affairs had been going with him. At the end of a successful cruise, the cutthroats had to be handled with a loose rein. They expected a grand carouse as a matter of course, and such a leader as Captain Davis was wise enough to close his eyes until he was ready to put the screws on again and prepare for another adventure. Most of the ship’s company were properly drunk when the alarm of fire was shouted. A lighted lantern had been overturned among the rum-casks, and the flames were running into the hold. Amid the shouting and confusion, the sober men tumbled into boats and pulled for the shore. The fire was eating straight toward the magazine, in which were stowed thirty thousand pounds of gunpowder.
One pirate, who was both astonishingly brave and sober, dropped through a hatchway, groped through the smoke, and yelled that unless they fetched him blankets and buckets of water the ship would blow up. Captain Snelgrave gathered all the rugs and blankets he could find and rushed below to join the fellow. Other men rallied when led by Captain Davis, and formed a bucket brigade to douse the blankets and stuff them against the bulkhead of the magazine. It was a ticklish situation, taking it by and large,
for the night was dark, the crew drunk, and no hope of mastering the fire seemed to remain. To spring into the water was certain death, from the sharks hovering around the vessel. Having accomplished all that he was able, Captain Snelgrave snatched up a quarter-boat grating and lowered it with a rope, hoping to float away upon that, as several persons had gone off with the boats. While the captain was thus meditating his escape he heard a shout from the main-deck, “Now for a brave blast to go to hell with.” On which some of the newly entered pirates near him, believing the ship must blow up in a few minutes, lamented their entering on that vile course of life, with bitter exclamations against the hardened offenders on the main-deck who dared to blaspheme in such an hour as this.
Fifty of the crew crawled out upon the bowsprit and sprit-sail yard, where they clung and hoped to be blown clear of the general upheaval. They handsomely deserved extermination, but a dozen gallant volunteers still toiled and suffered in the hold, and at length they smothered the fire before it ate into the magazine. All of them were terribly burned, and it is fair to assume that Captain Davis awarded them an extra share of the plunder when it was distributed. One of the heroes of the crisis was Captain Snelgrave, or so the pirates admiringly agreed, and they were more than ever anxious to befriend him. They would have been glad to serve under him, but he had no taste for piracy and declined the honor when a vote was passed around the tubs of grog that he go as a sailing master until he had gained experience and was ready to command a crew of gentlemen of fortune.
Disappointed in this, they used their gold to buy back for him a considerable amount of his cargo, which had been divided or sold ashore, and presented him with some of the merchandise allotted to them from the ships lately captured by Captain Davis. There were worse pirates on the high seas than this collection of gallows-birds in the harbor of Sierra Leone, and merchant mariners much less admirable than this London slave-trader, Captain Snelgrave. Thanks to the exertions of the solicitous pirates, he gathered together sufficient possessions to retrieve the voyage from complete disaster, and the stuff was saved from harm in the rough warehouse ashore, where the kindly Captain Glynn was a vigilant guardian.
The pirates were now ready to depart on their disreputable business, Cocklyn and La Boise sailing in company, while Captain Davis ranged off alone. This time he carried out his purpose of raiding the Portuguese colony, the military governor of which received warning from a coasting vessel and accordingly strengthened his defenses and armed every able-bodied man. Captain Davis led his pirates from their boats and stormed the fort under a heavy fire.
The Portuguese governor was a fighting man himself and he gave as good as he took. The pirates gained the parapet and set the wooden buildings afire with hand grenades, but while the issue wavered, Captain Davis fell, a pistol-ball in his stomach. In a hand-to-hand conflict his pirates were driven back to the beach, carrying their dying captain with them. Defeated, they left their dead and wounded and fled in the boats, while in the last gasp Captain Davis discharged both his pistols at the enemy. “And those on board the ship, who expected to hoist in treasure, had to receive naught but their wounded comrades and dead commander.”
Captain Snelgrave, left free to work out his own plans, loaded his cargo into one of the vessels which the pirates had abandoned in the river. He was shrewd enough to know that he could not be accused of receiving a stolen ship, for maritime usage now protected him. He was taking possession of a derelict and sailing her home, where he could make terms of sale or salvage with her rightful owners. And so he mustered as many of his crew as had not been lured away by the pirates, and said good-by to his loyal friend Captain Glynn, and took on board six other masters of ships who were stranded at Sierra Leone because they had been unlucky enough to fall in with Cocklyn and La Boise and Captain Davis. On August 1, in the year 1719, Captain Snelgrave dropped anchor in the port of Bristol and trudged ashore to find a pleasant haven in a tavern and tell his troubles to other sun-browned skippers who knew the Guinea coast and the hazards of the slave-trade.
A different kind of fortune was that of Captain George Roberts, who sailed from Virginia for the Guinea coast in the year of 1721. Pirates overtook his sloop off the Cape Verd Islands, and at first treated him rather good-humoredly, as he was a man of spirit and could hold his own when the bottle was passed. The pirate captain took a fancy to him and had a mind to let him resume his voyage, but unluckily the health of the “Old Pretender,” James III, was proposed at table, and Captain Roberts, who was no Jacobite, roundly refused to drink such a damnable toast. He did not purpose to bend his sentiments to suit the fancy of any pirates that ever sailed unhung. One of them was for shooting him through the head, but to the others it seemed more entertaining to put him aboard his own vessel without provisions, water, or sails, and to kidnap his crew as well, and let him drift out to sea. Captain Roberts listened to the discussion and had nothing more to say. He would drink the health of a king of his own choosing if it cost him his skin, and that was the end of it.