ly 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 scoundrel