Page:Daring deeds of famous pirates; true stories of the stirring adventures, bravery and resource of pirates, filibusters & buccaneers (1917).djvu/187

 his misery, to go back to Bristol and throw himself on the merchants' mercy. He therefore shipped on board a trading ship, worked his passage to Plymouth and then walked to Bideford. He had arrived there not many days when he fell ill and died without so much as the money to buy him a burial. So it was true that "there be land rats and water rats, land thieves and water thieves, I mean pirates." Avery had met a company of men who treated him in the way he had robbed others. Thus, the whole of his long voyaging from sea to sea, the entire series of events from the time when he had seized Gibson's ship, had been not only profitless but brought upon him the utmost misery, terror, starvation and ultimate death. He had fought, he had schemed, he had done underhand tricks, he had told lies and he had endured bitter anxiety: but all to no purpose whatever.