Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/450

 (b) purports to be written by Adrian Van Broeck, a Dutchman, who was a prisoner for some time with Avery in Madagascar, but he effected his escape in a vessel of the East India Company, and his narrative terminates abruptly with the severance of his connexion with the pirates.

(c). In this as we have it late version, all the early life of John Avery is given totally different from (a) and (b). Little or no reliance can be placed on it, and as to (b) it is hard to say whether Van Broeck's is a fictitious narrative or whether he records actual facts. It is singular that Johnson should not have spoken explicitly about this, the first published record of the pirate's adventures.

(d) purports to be Avery's story of his own life, but it is almost certainly a product of Defoe's lively imagination.

On the whole Johnson's account is the most reliable, and we will follow that, noticing the divergences from it in (b), and will take no account of (c) and (d). Johnson begins: "None of the bold adventurers on the Seas were ever so much talk'd of for a while as Avery. He was represented in Europe as one that had rais'd himself to the Dignity of a King, and was likely to be the Founder of a new Monarchy; having, as it was said, taken immense Riches, and married the Great Mogul's Daughter, who was taken in an Indian Ship which fell into his Hands; by whom he had many Children, living in great Royalty and State: That he had built Forts, elected Magistrates, and was Master of a stout Squadron of Ships, mann'd with able and desperate Fellows of all Nations. That he gave Commissions out in his own Name to the Captains of his Ships, and to the Commanders of the Forts, and was acknowledg'd by them as their Prince. A Play was