MAJOR PENNER On the following morning, less than twelve hours after their capture, the Kingston pirates were admitted to the Royal pardon. It was an impressive ceremony enacted with considerable solemnity on the broad square of the Fort, and New Providence turned out in force to see it. Along one side of the parade awnings had been erected for the most consequential spectators: the planters, merchants, and gentlefolk and their women who constituted the pick of the island’s society, and before them, in a canopied chair, sat the Governor, magnificent in lilac taffeta and plumed castor, with Master Dickey at his elbow. Marshalled in front of the Governor, with Rackham at their head and a hollow square of garrison infantry about them, stood the filibusters of the Kingston, none the better for a night in the Fort’s wet stone cells. Blinking in the dazzling sunlight they listened as Master Dickey addressed them in the name of the most high and mighty prince, George, of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, King, and catalogued their misdeeds as form demanded.
