He was very fond of history, and very well read
in the literature of the day. He was accustomed to the habits of good
society, and knew a great deal about farming and horses, cows and
poultry, but if he had been compelled to steer a vessel, he would not
have known how to keep her bow ahead of her stern.
But notwithstanding this absolute incapacity for such a life, and the
absence of any of the ordinary motives for abandoning respectability and
entering upon a career of crime, Major Bonnet was determined to become a
pirate, and he became one. He had money enough to buy a ship and to fit
her out and man her, and this he quietly did at Bridgetown, nobody
supposing that he was going to do anything more than start off on some
commercial cruise. When everything was ready, his vessel slipped out of
the harbor one night, and after he was sailing safely on the rolling sea
he stood upon the quarter-deck and proclaimed himself a pirate. It might
not be supposed that this was necessary, for the seventy men on board
his ship were all desperate cutthroats, of various nationalities, whom
he had found in the little port, and who knew very well what was
expected of them when they reached the sea. But if Stede Bonnet had not
proclaimed himself a pirate, it is possible that he might not have
believed, himself, that he was one, and so he ran up the black flag,
with its skeleton or skull and cross-bones, he girded on a great
cutlass, and, folding his arms, he ordered his mate to steer the vessel
to the coast of Virginia.
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