his back, and when in a crowd the future pirate would, from above, snatch
the hats and even the wigs off the heads of passing citizens and secret
them in the basket and so get away with them. The Low family were the
originators of this ingenious and fascinating trick, and for a time it was
most successful, until the people of the city took to tying on their hats
and wigs with bands to prevent their sudden removal. When he grew up, Ned
went to Boston and earned an honest living as a rigger, but after a while
he tired of this and sailed in a sloop to Honduras to steal log-wood. Here
Low quarrelled with his captain, tried to shoot him, and then went off in
an open boat with twelve other men, and the very next day they took a
small vessel, in which they began their "war against all the world." Low
soon happened to meet with Captain Lowther, the pirate, and the two agreed
to sail in company. This partnership lasted until May 28th, 1722, when
they took a prize, a brigantine from Boston, which Low went into with a
crew of forty-four men. This vessel they armed with two guns, four
swivels, and six quarter-casks of powder, and saying good-bye to Lowther,
sailed off on their own account. A week later a prize fell into their
hands, which was the first of several. Things soon became too hot for Low
along the American coast and the West Indies, as several men-of-war were
searching for him; so he sailed to the Azores, taking on his way a big
French ship of thirty-four guns, and later, in the harbour of St. Michael,
he seized several vessels which he found at anchor there. Here they burnt
the French ship, but let the crew all go, except the cook, who, they said,
"being a greasy fellow would fry well in the fire, so the poor man was
bound to the main mast and burnt in the ship to the no small derision of
Low and his Mirmidons."

Low and his crew now began to treat their prisoners with great brutality.
However, on one occasion the biter was bitten. It happened that one of the
drunken crew, playfully cutting at a prisoner, missed his mark and
accidentally slashed Captain Low across his lower jaw, the sword opening
his cheek and laying bare his teeth. The surgeon was called, who at once
stitched up the wound, but Low found some fault with the operation, as
well he might, seeing that "the surgeon was tollerably drunk" at the time.
The surgeon's professional pride was outraged by this criticism of his
skill by a layman, and he showed his ann