everal captains and mates and other men, their prisoners, whose
ships they had taken away, and to whom now they made reparation, by
giving them what they had taken violently from another, so that it was a
strange medley of mock justice made up of rapine and generosity blended
together.

Two days after this they took a Bristol ship bound from Newfoundland to
Oporto with fish. They let her cargo alone, for they had no occasion for
fish, but they took out almost all their provisions, all the ammunition,
arms, etc., and her good sails, also her best cables, and forced two of
her men to go away with them, and then got ten of the Frenchman on board
and let her go. But just as they were parting with her, they consulted
together what to do with Williams the lieutenant, who was then among the
prisoners and in irons. And after a short debate, they resolved to put
him on board the Bristol-man and send him away too, which accordingly
was done, with directions to the master to deliver him on board the
first English man-of-war they should meet with, in order to get his
being hanged for a pirate, as they jeeringly called him, as soon as he
came to England, giving the master an account of some of his villainies.

The truth is, this Williams was a monster rather than a man. He was the
most inhuman, bloody and desperate creature that the world could
produce, and was even too wicked for Gow and all his crew, though they
pirates and murderers, as has been shown. His temper was so savage, so
villainous, so merciless, that even the pirates themselves told him it
was time he was hanged out of the way.

One instance of the barbarity of Williams cannot be omitted, and will be
sufficient to justify all that can be said of him. When Gow gave it as a
reason against engaging with the Martinico ship, that he had a great
many prisoners on board, and some of their own men that they could not
depend on, Williams proposed to have them all called up one by one, and
to cut their throats and throw them overboard--a proposal so horrid that
the worst of the crew shook their heads at it. Gow answered him very
handsomely, that there had been too much blood spilled already; yet the
refusing this, heightened the quarrel, and was the chief occasion of his
offering to pistol Gow himself. After which his behaviour was such as
made all the ship's crew resolved to be rid of him, and it was thought
if they had not had an opportunity to send him away, as they did by t