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an island called Mulberry Island, provided we went on shore at

the watering place, where the shipping used most commonly to
ride, that there the pirates had buried considerable sums of

money in great chests well clamped with iron plates. As to my
part, I never was that way, nor much acquainted with any that

ever used those parts; but I have made inquiry, and am informed
that there is such a place as Mulberry Island. If any person who

uses those parts should think it worth while to dig a little way
at the upper end of a small cove, where it is convenient to land,

he would soon find whether the information I had was well
grounded. Fronting the landing place are five trees, among which,

he said, the money was hid. I cannot warrant the truth of this
account; but if I was ever to go there, I should find some means

or other to satisfy myself, as it could not be a great deal out
of my way. If anybody should obtain the benefit of this account,

if it please God that they ever come to England, 'tis hoped they
will remember whence they had this information."

Another worthy was Capt. Edward Low, who learned his trade of
sail-making at good old Boston town, and piracy at Honduras. No

one stood higher in the trade than he, and no one mounted to more
lofty altitudes of bloodthirsty and unscrupulous wickedness. 'Tis

strange that so little has been written and sung of this man of
might, for he was as worthy of story and of song as was

Blackbeard.
It was under a Yankee captain that he made his first cruise--down

to Honduras, for a cargo of logwood, which in those times was no
better than stolen from the Spanish folk.

One day, lying off the shore, in the Gulf of Honduras, comes
Master Low and the crew of the whaleboat rowing across from the

beach, where they had been all morning chopping logwood.
"What are you after?" says the captain, for they were coming back

with nothing but themselves in the boat.
"We're after our dinner," says Low, as spokesman of the party.

"You'll have no dinner," says the captain, "until you fetch off
another load."

"Dinner or no dinner, we'll pay for it," says Low, wherewith he
up with a musket, squinted along the barrel, and pulled the

trigger.
Luckily the gun hung fire, and the Yankee captain was spared to

steal logwood a while longer.
All the same, that was no place for Ned Low to make a longer

stay, so off he and his messmates rowed in a whaleboat, captured
a brig out at sea, and turned pirates.

He presently fell in with the notorious Captain Lowther, a fellow
after his own kidney, who put the finishing touches to his

education and taught him what wickedness he did not already know.
And so he became a master pirate, and a famous hand at his craft,

and thereafter forever bore an inveterate hatred of all Yankees
because of the dinner he had lost, and never failed to smite

whatever one of them luck put within his reach. Once he fell in
with a ship off South Carolina--the Amsterdam Merchant, Captain

Williamson, commander--a Yankee craft and a Yankee master. He
slit the nose and cropped the ears of the captain, and then

sailed merrily away, feeling the better for having marred a
Yankee.

New York and New England had more than one visit from the doughty
captain, each of which visits they had good cause to remember,

for he made them smart for it.
Along in the year 1722 thirteen vessels were riding at anchor in

front of the good town of Marblehead. Into the harbor sailed a
strange craft. "Who is she?" say the townsfolk, for the coming

of a new vessel was no small matter in those days.
Who the strangers were was not long a matter of doubt. Up goes

the black flag, and the skull and crossbones to the fore.
"'Tis the bloody Low," say one and all; and straightway all was

flutter and commotion, as in a duck pond when a hawk pitches and
strikes in the midst.

It was a glorious thing for our captain, for here were thirteen
Yankee crafts at one and the same time. So he took what he

wanted, and then sailed away, and it was many a day before
Marblehead forgot that visit.

Some time after this he and his consort fell foul of an English
sloop of war, the Greyhound, whereby they were so roughly handled

that Low was glad enough to slip away, leaving his consort and
her crew behind him, as a sop to the powers of law and order. And

lucky for them if no worse fate awaited them than to walk the
dreadful plank with a bandage around the blinded eyes and a rope

around the elbows. So the consort was taken, and the crew tried
and hanged in chains, and Low sailed off in as pretty a bit of

rage as ever a pirate fell into.
The end of this worthy is lost in the fogs of the past: some say

that he died of a yellow fever down in New Orleans; it was not at
the end of a hempen cord, more's the pity.

Here fittingly with our strictly American pirates should stand
Major Stede Bonnet along with the rest. But in truth he was only

a poor half- and-half fellow of his kind, and even after his hand
was fairly turned to the business he had undertaken, a qualm of

conscience would now and then come across him, and he would make
vast promises to forswear his evil courses.

However, he jogged along in his course of piracy snugly enough
until he fell foul of the gallant Colonel Rhett, off Charleston

Harbor, whereupon his luck and his courage both were suddenly
snuffed out with a puff of powder smoke and a good rattling

broadside. Down came the "Black Roger" with its skull and
crossbones from the fore, and Colonel Rhett had the glory of

fetching back as pretty a cargo of scoundrels and cutthroats as
the town ever saw.

After the next assizes they were strung up, all in a row--evil
apples ready for the roasting.

"Ned" England was a fellow of different blood--only he snapped
his whip across the back of society over in the East Indies and

along the hot shores of Hindustan.
The name of Capt. Howel Davis stands high among his fellows. He

was the Ulysses of pirates, the beloved not only of Mercury, but
of Minerva.

He it was who hoodwinked the captain of a French ship of double
the size and strength of his own, and fairly cheated him into the

surrender of his craft without the firing of a single pistol or
the striking of a single blow; he it was who sailed boldly into

the port of Gambia, on the coast of Guinea, and under the guns of
the castle, proclaiming himself as a merchant trading for slaves.

The cheat was kept up until the fruit of mischief was ripe for
the picking; then, when the governor and the guards of the castle

were lulled into entire security, and when Davis's band was
scattered about wherever each man could do the most good, it was

out pistol, up cutlass, and death if a finger moved. They tied
the soldiers back to back, and the governor to his own armchair,

and then rifled wherever it pleased them. After that they sailed
away, and though they had not made the fortune they had hoped to

glean, it was a good snug round sum that they shared among them.
Their courage growing high with success, they determined to

attempt the island of Del Principe--a prosperous Portuguese
settlement on the coast. The plan for taking the place was

cleverly laid, and would have succeeded, only that a Portuguese
negro among the pirate crew turned traitor and carried the news

ashore to the governor of the fort. Accordingly, the next day,
when Captain Davis came ashore, he found there a good strong

guard drawn up as though to honor his coming. But after he and
those with him were fairly out of their boat, and well away from


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