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.
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