ty, she stood beside him in his ancestral home, never left him.

Off the port of Charles Town, South Carolina, the Badger lay and waited,
and soon, from an outgoing bark, the news came to Captain Vince that
several weeks before the pirate Bonnet of the Revenge had taken an
English ship as she was entering port, and had then sailed southward.
Southward now sailed the Badger, and, as there was but little wind,
Captain Vince swore with an unremitting diligence.

It was a quiet morning and the Badger was nearing the straits of Florida
when a sail was reported almost due south.

Up came Captain Vince with his glass, and after a long, long look, and
another, and another, during which the two vessels came slowly nearer
and nearer each other, the captain turned to his first officer and said
quietly: "She flies the skull and bones. She's the first of those
hellish pirates that we have yet met on this most unlucky cruise."

"If we could send her, with her crew on board, ten times to the bottom,"
said the other, "she would not pay us what her vile fraternity has cost
us. But these pirate craft know well the difference between a Spanish
galleon and a British man-of-war, and they will always give us a wide
berth."

"But this one will not," said the captain.

Then again he looked long and earnestly through his glass. "Send aft
the three men who know the Revenge," said he.

Presently the men came aft, and one by one they went aloft, and soon
came the report, vouched for by each of them:

"The sail ahead is the pirate Revenge."

Now all redness left the face of Captain Vince. He was as pale as if he
had been afraid that the pirate ship would capture him, but every man on
his vessel knew that there was no fear in the soul or the body of the
captain of the Badger. Quickly came his orders, clear and sharp;
everything had been gone over before, but everything was gone over
again. The corvette was to bear down upon the pirate, her cannon--great
guns for those days, and which could soon have disabled, if they had not
sunk, the smaller vessel--were muzzled and told to hold their peace. The
man-of-war was to bear down upon the pirate and to capture her by
boarding. There was to be no broadside, no timber-splitting cannon
balls.

The wind was light and in favour of the corvette, and slowly the two
vessels diminished the few miles between them; but there was enough wind
to show the royal colours on the Badger.

"He is a bold fellow,