The next of Low's transactions was on a wholesale scale. Rounding Cape
Cod and sailing up the coast, he at last reached the vicinity of
Marblehead, and there, in a harbor called in those days Port Rosemary,
he found at anchor a fleet of thirteen merchant vessels. This was a
grand sight, as welcome to the eye of a pirate as a great nugget of gold
would be to a miner who for weary days had been washing yellow grains
from the "pay dirt" which he had laboriously dug from the hard soil.
It would have been easy for Low to take his pick from these vessels
quietly resting in the little harbor, for he soon perceived that none of
them were armed nor were they able to protect themselves from assault,
but his audacity was of an expansive kind, and he determined to capture
them all. Sailing boldly into the harbor, he hoisted the dreadful black
flag, and then, standing on his quarter-deck with his speaking-trumpet,
he shouted to each vessel as he passed it that if it did not surrender
he would board it and give no quarter to captain or crew. Of course
there was nothing else for the peaceful sailors to do but to submit, and
so this greedy pirate took possession of each vessel in turn and
stripped it of everything of value he cared to take away.
But he did not confine himself to stealing the goods on board these
merchantmen.
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