The Prosperous they sank and the Speedy Return they burned, and in Bowen’s prize they continued their depredations, the two crews being joined together. This made Howard’s ninth change of vessels since he had taken to piracy.
As they cruised down the coast of Madagascar they came in sight of Howard’s old haven, where he had buried his treasure. He became seized with a desire for shore life, and with those of his men who had lived there before with him, and with their share of the recent booty, he went back to his old stamping-ground to settle down. He was received with open arms by his old friends among the natives; he married a Malagasy woman, and for a long time lived quietly and peaceably, shooting, fishing, watching his herds, and cultivating his fields.
A missionary who was shipwrecked on the coast about a year after Howard’s return worked on the pirate’s soft heart so successfully that before being taken home on a trading-vessel that put in for water he had brought the gallant buccaneer into the close folds of the Roman Catholic Church and to a full realization of his unusually sinful state. After the missionary’s departure Howard missed the theological discourse and dispute that had whiled away many a tropic twilight, and he knew not where to turn for an outlet of his intellectual activities. Finally the bright idea struck him that it would be both pleasing and beneficial to evangelize the natives. In a fit of religious enthusiasm he proceeded to this work with his usual prodigal hand. Unfortunately for himself, he used a club in the process, and this, coupled with his brutal treatment of his wife, made him unpopular among the Malagasy.
One night the docile aborigines fell upon him while he was asleep in his hammock, and left mementos of their presence in the shape of thirty-seven assagais stuck decoratively in various parts of his body. When found he was very dead, and thus terminated the earthly career of a treacherous and unworthy ruffian, whose only claims to our consideration were his good seamanship and Anglo-Saxon pluck.
XI
TEW, OF RHODE ISLAND
A Fighter from the Seas
On a lovely morning in the early part of the eighteenth century two vessels might have been seen approaching each other at that point where the northern waters of the Mozambique Channel mingle with those of the Indian Ocean. The day was mild and the wind light and variable. The ships rolled lazily on the languid swell, and a couple of leagues to the south and east of them the low, green shores of Madagascar were dimly visible.
As the vessels drew near to each other the smaller of the two, a large brig-sloop with raking masts and a narrow, speedy-looking hull, put down her helm, rounded into the wind, and ran the black flag up to her main peak. The other, a trim and sturdy ship-rigged craft, with something of a man-of-war look about her lofty spars and graceful lines, seemed little perturbed by this significant display of the pirate emblem. She hove to, however, and the two vessels lay rolling idly on the blue water a long musket-shot apart.
Before the sloop had time for any further demonstration one of the ship’s quarter-boats was lowered and brought to the starboard gangway, and into her stepped a spare, dark, wiry-looking man of medium height, evidently the Captain. The boat shoved off and made for the sloop, the Captain steering, and the crew pulling with the long, regular stroke of man-of-war’s men.
So far the ship had displayed no colors, and the peculiar nonchalance with which her crew had behaved towards the pirates excited the latter’s marked apprehension. Could she be a public ship in disguise? If so, then farewell to the buccaneer’s hopes of brave booty in the Indian seas, for the wind had fallen and the vessels were drifting nearer together.