When the Governor heard what had happened, he quickly sent out drummers to sound the alarm in the seaport towns and to call upon volunteers to go out and capture the pirates.  So great was the resentment caused by the audacious deed of Low that a large number of volunteers hastened to offer their services to the Governor, and two vessels were fitted out with such rapidity that, although their commanders had only heard of the affair in the morning, they were ready to sail before sunset.  They put on all sail and made the best speed they could, and although they really caught sight of Low’s ship, the pirate vessel was a swifter craft than those in pursuit of her, and the angry sailors of Rhode Island were at last compelled to give up the chase.

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.  As he preferred to command several vessels instead of one, he took possession of some of the best of the ships and compelled as many of their men as he thought he would need to enter his service.  Then, as one of the captured vessels was larger and better than his brigantine, he took it for his own ship, and at the head of the little pirate fleet he bid farewell to Marblehead and started out on a grand cruise against the commerce of our coast.

It is wonderful how rapidly this man Low succeeded in his business enterprises.  Beginning with a little vessel with a dozen unarmed men, he found himself in a very short time at the head of what was perhaps the largest piratical force in American waters.  What might have happened if Nature had not taken a hand in this game it is not difficult to imagine, for our seaboard towns, especially those of the South, would have been an easy prey to Low and his fleet.