Craven, the pirate, was a much bolder and desperate man, yet his end was different. He hailed from the same port as the skipper of the Penguin, and sailed with the Cape Horn fleet in its early days.
He retired from the sea at the age of thirty-five and settled on the southern coast of California, taking to farming with that peculiar zeal shown by all deep-water sailors. He fell desperately in love, married, and the following year shot and killed a man who was less pious than polite in his behavior towards Craven’s wife.
After this affair he fled. Nothing was heard of him again for several years, but as he was an expert navigator it was supposed he took to the sea for safety.
One day an American trader was standing in the Hoogla River, China, when a junk appeared heading for her under all sail. Behind the junk, about a mile to windward, came a trading schooner. The Chinese on the junk made desperate efforts to overtake the American ship. When they came within hailing distance they begged to be allowed alongside.
The skipper of the Yankee warned them off with his guns, and ten minutes later the schooner had laid the junk aboard. There was some sharp firing for a few minutes, and then the Americans saw the men from the schooner swarm over the junk’s deck. After that Chinamen were dropped overboard in twos and threes, and before they had drawn out of sight ahead the schooner was standing away again, leaving the junk a burning wreck. When the ship made harbor they learned that Craven had appeared on the coast. He had been there the preceding year and had been recognized. Altogether it was said he had taken over five hundred junks and put their crews overboard. The captain of the American ship reported the incident he had just witnessed to the English gunboat Sovereign, but no action was taken in the matter. There was no treaty between the United States and China, and, as Craven was an American, it was a case for the Chinese to settle.
Craven had been on the coast several times. He had a rendezvous to the eastward somewhere among the numerous coral reefs, and from this den he would sally forth in his schooner, armed with six twelve-pounders, and swoop down upon some unsuspecting Chinese town. His boldness was remarkable.
Once he held a whole village in check single-handed while his men carried a boat-load of young maidens aboard the schooner, and then returned for the rest of their booty left upon the sand. It was said that had the emperor himself been within a day’s journey of the coast, Craven would have had him aboard his vessel to gratify his sinister humor.
His cruelty was phenomenal. A favorite amusement of his being to tie two Chinamen together by their pigtails and sling them across a spring-stay. Then he would offer freedom to the one who would demolish the other the quicker. It was seldom that he failed to produce a horrible spectacle.
On one occasion when he captured a prominent mandarin he asked an enormous ransom. Not getting it within the time specified, he had the unfortunate man skinned and stuffed. Then he was carried ashore and left standing for his friends to greet.
Craven’s crew numbered less than twenty-five men, and they were all white, except two or three who acted as servants to the rest, taking a hand in the fracases only when ordered to.