e wore no
bristling beard, but as her face was sunburned and seamed by the
weather, she looked mannish enough to frighten the senses out of any
unfortunate trader on whose deck she bounded in company with her
shouting, hairy-faced companions. It is told of her that she did not
fancy the life of a pirate, but she seemed to believe in the principle
of whatever is worth doing is worth doing well; she was as ready with
her cutlass and her pistol as any other ocean bandit.

But although Mary was a daring pirate, she was also a woman, and again
she fell in love. A very pleasant and agreeable sailor was taken
prisoner by the crew of her ship, and Mary concluded that she would take
him as her portion of the spoils. Consequently, at the first port they
touched she became again a woman and married him, and as they had no
other present method of livelihood he remained with her on her ship.
Mary and her husband had no real love for a pirate's life, and they
determined to give it up as soon as possible, but the chance to do so
did not arrive. Mary had a very high regard for her new husband, who was
a quiet, amiable man, and not at all suited to his present life, and as
he had become a pirate for the love of her, she did everything she could
to make life easy for him.

She even went so far as to fight a duel in his place, one of the crew
having insulted him, probably thinking him a milksop who would not
resent an affront. But the latent courage of Mary's husband instantly
blazed up, and he challenged the insulter to a duel. Although Mary
thought her husband was brave enough to fight anybody, she thought that
perhaps, in some ways, he was a milksop and did not understand the use
of arms nearly as well as she did. Therefore, she made him stay on board
the ship while she went to a little island near where they were anchored
and fought the duel with sword and pistol. The man pirate and the woman
pirate now went savagely to work, and it was not long before the man
pirate lay dead upon the sand, while Mary returned to an admiring crew
and a grateful husband.

During her piratical career Mary fell in with another woman pirate, Anne
Bonny, by name, and these women, being perhaps the only two of their
kind, became close friends. Anne came of a good family. She was the
daughter of an Irish lawyer, who went to Carolina and became a planter,
and there the little girl grew up. When her mother died she kept the
house, but her disposition was ve