But
their ship was taken, and Mary and Anne, in company with all the pirates
who had been left alive, were put in irons and carried to England.
When she was in prison, Mary declared that she and her husband had
firmly intended to give up piracy and become private citizens. But when
she was put on trial, the accounts of her deeds had a great deal more
effect than her words upon her judges, and she was condemned to be
executed. She was saved, however, from this fate by a fever of which she
died soon after her conviction.
The impetuous Anne was also condemned, but the course of justice is
often very curious and difficult to understand, and this hard-hearted
and sanguinary woman was reprieved and finally pardoned. Whether or not
she continued to disport herself as a man we do not know, but it is
certain that she was the last of the female pirates.
There are a great many things which women can do as well as men, and
there are many professions and lines of work from which they have been
long debarred, and for which they are most admirably adapted, but it
seems to me that piracy is not one of them. It is said that a woman's
nature is apt to carry her too far, and I have never heard of any man
pirate who would allow himself to become so enraged against the
cowardice of his companions that he would deliberately fire down into
the hold of a vessel containing his wife and a crowd of his former
associates.
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