There are a great many things which women can do as well as men, and there are many professions and lines of work from which they have been long debarred, and for which they are most admirably adapted, but it seems to me that piracy is not one of them.  It is said that a woman’s nature is apt to carry her too far, and I have never heard of any man pirate who would allow himself to become so enraged against the cowardice of his companions that he would deliberately fire down into the hold of a vessel containing his wife and a crowd of his former associates.

Chapter XXIX

A Pirate from Boyhood

About the beginning of the eighteenth century there lived in Westminster, England, a boy who very early in life made a choice of a future career.  Nearly all boys have ideas upon this subject, and while some think they would like to be presidents or generals of armies, others fancy that they would prefer to be explorers of unknown countries or to keep candy shops.  But it generally happens that these youthful ideas are never carried out, and that the boy who would wish to sell candy because he likes to eat it, becomes a farmer on the western prairie, where confectionery is never seen, and the would-be general determines to study for the ministry.

But Edward Low, the boy under consideration, was a different sort of a fellow.  The life of a robber suited his youthful fancy, and he not only adopted it at a very early age, but he stuck to it until the end of his life.  He was much stronger and bolder than the youngsters with whom he associated, and he soon became known among them as a regular land pirate.  If a boy possessed anything which Ned Low desired, whether it happened to be an apple, a nut, or a farthing, the young robber gave chase to him, and treated him as a pirate treats a merchant vessel which he has boarded.

Not only did young Low resemble a pirate in his dishonest methods, but he also resembled one in his meanness and cruelty; if one of his victims was supposed by him to have hidden any of the treasures which his captor believed him to possess, Low would inflict upon him every form of punishment which the ingenuity of a bad boy could devise, in order to compel him to confess where he had concealed the half-penny which had been given to him for holding a horse, or the ball with which he had been seen playing.  In the course of time this young street pirate became a terror to all boys in that part of London in which he lived, and by beginning so early he acquired a great proficiency in dishonest and cruel practices.

It is likely that young Low inherited his knavish disposition, for one of his brothers became a very bold and ingenious thief, and invented a new kind of robbery which afterwards was popular in London.  This brother grew to be a tall fellow, and it was his practice to dress himself like a porter,—­one of those men who in those days carried packages and parcels about the city.  On his head he poised a basket, and supporting this burden with his hands, he hurriedly made his way through the most crowded streets of London.