The disabled pirate ship was quickly captured, and not long afterwards
twenty-five of her crew were tried, convicted, and hung near Newport,
Rhode Island. But the arrant Low escaped without injury, and continued
his career of contemptible crime for some time longer. What finally
became of him is not set down in the histories of piracy. It is not
improbable that if the men under his command were not too brutally
stupid to comprehend his cowardly unfaithfulness to them, they suddenly
removed from this world one of the least interesting of all base
beings.
Chapter XXX
The Pirate of the Gulf
At the beginning of this century there was a very able and, indeed,
talented man living on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, who has been
set down in the historical records of the times as a very important
pirate, and who is described in story and in tradition as a gallant and
romantic freebooter of the sea. This man was Jean Lafitte, widely known
as "The Pirate of the Gulf," and yet who was, in fact, so little of a
pirate, that it may be doubted whether or not he deserves a place in
these stories of American pirates.
Lafitte was a French blacksmith, and, while still a young man, he came
with his two brothers to New Orleans, and set up a shop in Bourbon
Street, where he did a good business in horseshoeing and in other
branches of his trade.
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