AUGUR, Captain John.
A pirate of New Providence, Bahama Islands. He accepted the royal pardon in 1718, and impressed the Governor, Woodes Rogers, so favourably that he was placed in command of a sloop to go and trade amongst the islands. A few days out Augur met with two sloops, "the sight of which dispelled all memory of their late good intention," and turning pirates once more, they seized the two sloops and took out of them money and goods to the value of £500.

The pirates now sailed for Hispaniola, but with bad luck, or owing to retribution, a sudden hurricane arose which drove them back to the one spot in the West Indies they must have been most anxious to avoid—that is, the Bahama Islands. Here the sloop became a total wreck, but the crew got ashore and for a while lay hidden in a wood. Rogers, hearing where they were, sent an armed sloop to the island, and the captain by fair promises induced the eleven marooned pirates to come aboard. Taking these back to Providence, Rogers had them all tried before a court of lately converted pirates, and they were condemned to be hanged. While standing on the gallows platform the wretched culprits reproached the crowd of spectators, so lately their fellow-brethren in piracy, for allowing their old comrades to be hanged, and urging them to come to the rescue. But virtue was still strong in these recent converts, and all the comfort the criminals got was to be told "it was their Business to turn their Minds to another World, and sincerely to repent of what Wickedness they had done in this." "Yes," answered the now irritated and in no-wise abashed Augur, "I do heartily repent: I repent I have not done more Mischief, and that we did not cut the Throats of them that took us, and I am extremely sorry that you an't all hang'd as well as we."