and the intrigue was defeated.  The embargo on all European trade at Surat was maintained, while the Dutch, French, and English were directed to scour the seas and destroy the pirates.  It was further ordered that Europeans on shore were not to carry arms or use palanquins, and their ships were forbidden to hoist their national flags.  The Dutch and French hung back.  They would not send a ship to sea without payment, except for their own affairs.  Sir John Gayer, more wisely, sent armed ships to convoy the Mocha fleet, at the Company’s charge, and so the storm passed off.

Meanwhile, Every, glutted with booty, made up his mind to retire[8] with his enormous gains.  According to Johnson, he gave the slip, at night, to his consorts, sailed for Providence in the Bahamas, where his crew dispersed, and thence made his way to England, just at the time a royal proclamation offering L500 for his apprehension was published.  The reward was doubled by an offer of four thousand rupees from the Company; eight rupees being the equivalent of a pound at that time.  Several of his crew also straggled home and were captured; but before he left the Indian coast, twenty-five Frenchmen, fourteen Danes, and some English were put ashore, fearing to show themselves in Europe or America.  This fact would seem to throw some doubt on the account of his having left his consorts by stealth.

On the 19th October, 1696, six of his crew were tried and sentenced at the Old Bailey, and a true bill was found and an indictment framed against Every himself, though he had not been apprehended.  According to Johnson,[9] Every changed his name and lived unostentatiously, while trying to sell the jewels he had amassed.  The merchant in whose hands he had placed them, suspecting how they had been come by, threatened him.  Every fled to Ireland, leaving his jewels in the merchant’s hands, and finally died in Devonshire in extreme poverty.  But the authority for this, as for most of the popular accounts of Every, is extremely doubtful.  That he was cheated out of some of his ill-gotten gains is probable enough, but it is in the highest degree improbable that he was known to be living in poverty, and yet that the large reward offered for his apprehension was not earned.  What is alone certain is that he was never apprehended, and that in a few months he carried off an amount of plunder such as never before was taken out of the Indian seas by a single rover.  For long he was the hero of every seaport town in England and North America; innumerable legends gathered round his name, and an immense impulse was given to piracy.