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.