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 very much more masculine than feminine.  She was very quick-tempered and easily enraged, and it is told of her that when an Englishwoman, who was working as a servant in her father’s house, had irritated Anne by some carelessness or impertinence, that hot-tempered young woman sprang upon her and stabbed her with a carving-knife.

It is not surprising that Anne soon showed a dislike for the humdrum life on a plantation, and meeting with a young sailor, who owned nothing in the world but the becoming clothes he wore, she married him.  Thereupon her father, who seems to have been as hot-headed as his daughter, promptly turned her out of doors.  The fiery Anne was glad enough to adopt her husband’s life, and she went to sea with him, sailing to New Providence.  There she was thrown into an entirely new circle of society.  Pirates were in the habit of congregating at this place, and Anne was greatly delighted with the company of these daring, dashing sea-robbers, of whose exploits she had so often heard.  The more she associated with the pirates, the less she cared for the plain, stupid sailors, who were content with the merchant service, and she finally deserted her husband and married a Captain Rackham, one of the most attractive and dashing pirates of the day.