“If the rogue is so desperate,” returned the youth straightening his powerful limbs, with a look of rising pride, “why do not the Island and the Plantations fit out a coaster in order to bring him in, that he might get a sight of a wholesome gibbet?  Let the drum beat on such a message through our neighbourhood and I’ll engage that it don’t leave it without one volunteer at least.”

“So much for not having seen war!  Of what use would flails and pitch-forks prove against men who have sold themselves to the devil?  Often has the Rover been seen at night, or just as the sun has been going down, by the King’s cruisers, who, having fairly surrounded the thieves, had good reason to believe that they had them already in the bilboes; but, when the morning has come, the prize was vanished, by fair means or by foul!”

“And are the villains so bloody-minded that they are called ‘Red?’”

“Such is the title of their leader,” returned the worthy tailor, who by this time was swelling with the importance of possessing so interesting a legend to communicate; “and such is also the name they give to his vessel; because no man, who has put foot on board her, has ever come back to say that she has a better or a worse; that is, no honest mariner or lucky voyager.  The ship is of the size of a King’s sloop, they say, and of like equipments and form; but she has miraculously escaped from the hands of many a gallant frigate; and once, it is whispered for no loyal subject would like to say such a scandalous thing openly, Pardon, that she lay under the guns of a fifty for an hour, and seemingly, to all eyes, she sunk like hammered lead to the bottom.  But, just as every body was shaking hands, and wishing his neighbour joy at so happy a punishment coming over the knaves, a West-Indiaman came into port, that had been robbed by the Rover on the morning after the night in which it was thought they had all gone into eternity together.  And what makes the matter worse, boy, while the King’s ship was careening with her keel out, to stop the holes of cannon balls, the pirate was sailing up and down the coast, as sound as the day that the wrights first turned her from their hands!”

“Well, this is unheard of!” returned the countryman, on whom the tale was beginning to make a sensible impression:  “Is she a well-turned and comely ship to the eye? or is it by any means certain that she is an actual living vessel at all?”

“Opinions differ.  Some say, yes; some say, no.  But I am well acquainted with a man who travelled a week in company with a mariner, who passed within a hundred feet of her, in a gale of wind.  Lucky it was for them, that the hand of the Lord was felt so powerfully on the deep, and that the Rover had enough to do to keep his own ship from foundering.  The acquaintance of my friend had a good view of both vessel and captain, therefore, in perfect safety.  He said, that the pirate was a man maybe half as big again as the tall preacher over on the main, with hair of the colour of the sun in a fog, and eyes that no man would like to look upon a second time.  He saw him as plainly as I see you; for the knave stood in the rigging of his ship, beckoning, with a hand as big as a coat-flap, for the honest trader to keep off, in order that the two vessels might not do one another damage by coming foul.”