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