ith
small stomach for cutlasses and slaughter. They were of the sort that
overtook Captain John Shattuck sailing home from Jamaica in 1718 when he
reported his capture by one Captain Charles Vain, "a Pyrat" of 12 guns
and 120 men who took him to Crooked Island, plundered him of various
articles, stripped the brig, abused the crew, and finally let him go.
In the same year the seamen of the Hopewell related that near Hispaniola
they met with pirates who robbed and ill-treated them and carried off
their mate because they had no navigator.

Ned Low, a gentleman rover of considerable notoriety, stooped to filch
the stores and gear from a fleet of fourteen poor fishermen of Cape
Sable. He had a sense of dramatic values, however, and frequently
brandished his pistols on deck, besides which, as set down by one of his
prisoners, "he had a young child in Boston for whom he entertained such
tenderness that on every lucid interval from drinking and revelling, I
have seen him sit down and weep plentifully."

A more satisfying figure was Thomas Pounds, who was taken by the sloop
Mary, sent after him from Boston in 1689. He was discovered in Vineyard
Sound, and the two vessels fought a gallant action, the pirate flying
a red flag and refusing to strike. Captain Samuel Pease of the Mary
was mortally wounded, while Pounds, this proper pirate, strode his
quarter-deck and waved his naked sword, crying, "Come on board, ye dogs,
and I will strike YOU presently." This invitation was promptly accepted
by the stout seamen from Boston, who thereupon swarmed over the bulwark
and drove all hands below, preserving Thomas Pounds to be hanged in
public.

In 1703 John Quelch, a man of resource, hoisted what he called "Old
Roger" over the Charles--a brigantine which had been equipped as a
privateer to cruise against the French of Acadia. This curious flag of
his was described as displaying a skeleton with an hour-glass in one
hand and "a dart in the heart with three drops of blood proceeding from
it in the other." Quelch led a mutiny, tossed the skipper overboard, and
sailed for Brazil, capturing several merchantmen on the way and looting
them of rum, silks, sugar, gold dust, and munitions. Rashly he came
sailing back to Marblehead, primed with a plausible yarn, but his men
talked too much when drunk and all hands were jailed. Upon the gallows
Quelch behaved exceedingly well, "pulling off his hat and bowing to the
spectators," while the somber Puri