Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirates Daughter

The Governor of Jamaica was much interested in the visit of Kate Bonnet, whom he saw alone in a room adjoining the public apartments. He had met her two or three times before, and had been forced to admit that the young girls of Barbadoes must be pretty and piquant in an extraordinary degree, and he had not wondered that his friend, Captain Vince, should have spoken of her in such an enthusiastic manner.

But now she was different. Her sorrow had given her dignity and had added to her beauty. She quickly told her tale, and he started upright in his chair as he heard it.

"Do you mean," he exclaimed, "that that pirate, after whom I sent the Badger, is your father? It amazes me! The similarity of names did not strike me; I never imagined any connection between you and the captain of that pirate ship."

"That's what Captain Vince said when I last saw him," remarked Kate.

"It must have astounded him to know it," exclaimed the Governor, "and I wonder, knowing it, that he consented to obey my orders; and had I been in his place I would have preferred to be dismissed from the service rather than to sail after your father and to destroy him. If I had known what I know now, my orders to Captain Vince would have been very different from what they were. I would have told him to capture your father, and to bring him here to me. It cannot be that he is in his right mind!"

Now Kate was weeping; the terrible words "destroy him," and the assurance that if she had thought sooner of appealing to the Governor, much misery, or at least the thought of misery, might have been spared her, so affected her that she could not control herself.

The Governor did not attempt to console her. Her sorrow was natural, and it was her right.

When she looked up again she spoke about what she had come to ask him for; the authority to bring back her father wherever she might find him, and to defend him from the attacks of all persons, whoever they might be, until she reached Jamaica. And then she told him how she would seek for her father on every sea.

The Governor sat and pondered. The father of such a girl should be saved from the terrible fate awaiting him, if the thing could possibly be done. And yet, what a difficult, almost hopeless thing it was to do. To find a pirate, a fierce and bloody pirate, and bring him back unharmed to his daughter's arms and to reasonable restraint.