Stede Bonnet's crew had already been tried and found guilty of piracy. The judges had now to consider the case of that buccaneer chief himself. Every one in Charles Town knew that he had sailed the seas time and again with the "Jolly Roger" at his masthead, but he was a man of very attractive appearance and manners, and many of the good people of the town thought that he really meant to repent and lead a better life. The judges and jury, however, with Bonnet's past record before them, saw only the plain duty of dealing with him as they had already dealt with his crew. Then Colonel Rhett, the gallant soldier who had twice captured Bonnet, came forward and offered to take the pirate personally to London, and ask the king to pardon him. The governor felt that he could not consent to this request; he knew how Bonnet had taken the oath of repentance once before, and had immediately run up the "Jolly Roger" on his ship at the first chance he found. Bonnet was a pirate, caught in the very act. The law was very clear. So Bonnet was hanged, as were the forty other prisoners who had been found guilty.
Nick stayed with Antony at Mr. Evans's warehouse until the excitement of the war with the pirates had blown over. He and Antony were almost inseparable, and the people who met the slim, dark fellow liked him for his good-nature and ready smile. Whenever they found the chance Antony and he went sailing or hunting or fishing.
"Tony," he said one day as they sailed back from fishing, "I'm going to leave the warehouse. No, don't look put out; I'm not going back to my old way of living. Besides, there aren't any of the rovers left for me to join. But I was made for the open air, and the work there in the shop can't hold me. The governor wants soldiers for his province of South Carolina, and I've a notion the life of a soldier would suit me. I take naturally to swords and pistols."
Antony smiled. "You'll make a good one, Nick. I shouldn't wonder if you got to be a general. Yes, you'll like it better. But Dad and I'll hate to have you go."
So, a few days later, Nicholas Carter, who had once been one of Blackbeard's crew, offered his services to Governor Johnson and became a soldier in the small army of the province. He did well, and rose to be a colonel, and one of the most popular men of Charles Town. But sometimes, when he and Antony Evans were alone together, Colonel Nicholas Carter would wink and say, "Remember the day when you and I sailed away on Blackbeard's ship? Yeo ho, for the life of a pirate!"
"The day you kidnapped me, you mean," Antony would remind him. "That was a wonderful holiday, to be sure!"
For respectable men turned pirates, and pirates reformed and became worthy citizens and soldiers, in the days before the little settlement of Charles Town became the city of Charleston in one of the thirteen states of the American Union.