Nine others showed much penitence. One obtained a short reprieve, and devoted it to prayer, singing the thirty-first Psalm at the foot of the gallows. Another (the deserter) exhorted the seamen to a good life, and sang a psalm. The next instant a gun was fired, and he swung from the fore-yard-arm. Bunce, the youngest of them all, made a pathetic speech, and begged forgiveness of God and all mankind. Seeing the gallows standing on a rock above the sea, he took a last look at the element which he had so often braved, and saying, he stood "as a beacon on a rock to warn mariners of danger," was turned off by the hangman.
Captain Worly, the next adventurer, embarked in an open boat, with eight other men, from New York in 1718, captured a shallop up the Delaware river, and soon took many other vessels, pursuing an English cruiser from Sandy Hook. He had now twenty-five men and six guns, and his crew had taken an oath to receive no quarter. While careening in an inlet in North Carolina he was attacked by two government sloops. These cruisers boarded him on either side, and the pirates fought so desperately that only the captain and another man were taken prisoners, and being much wounded were hung the next day for fear they should die, and the law not have its due.
Captain George Lowther was originally second mate on board a vessel carrying soldiers to a fort of the Royal African Company's on the river Gambia, the very one that had been destroyed by Davis. Captain Massey, who commanded these men, offended at the arrogance of the merchants, plotted with Lowther, who had been ill-treated by his captain, to run away with the vessel. They then started as pirates—their vessel, the Delivery, having fifty men and sixteen guns. The worthy partners soon quarrelled, Massey knowing nothing of the sea and Lowther nothing of the land. Massey wished to land with thirty men and attack the French in Hispaniola, but Lowther refused his consent; and when Lowther resolved to scuttle a ship, Massey interposed in its behalf. Massey, soon after this, being put on board a prize with ten malcontents, gave himself up at Jamaica, and was sent to cruise in search of his old partner. Massey wrote to the African Company, and prayed to be forgiven, or at least shot as a soldier, and not hung as a pirate. He then came to London, gave himself up, and was soon after hung.
Off Hispaniola Lowther captured two vessels—one of them a Spaniard, the crew of which, in consideration of their being also pirates, and having just boarded an English ship, were drifted off in their own launch, but the English sailors were enrolled in their own crew. They then put into a key, cleaned, and spent some time in revelry. Starting again about Christmas, at the Grand Caimanes they met with a small pirate vessel, commanded by a captain named Low, who now became Lowther's lieutenant. The old ship they sank, and soon after attacked a Boston vessel, the Greyhound, which, though only 200 tons, refused to bring to in answer to Lowther's gun, and held out for an hour before she struck her ensign, seeing resistance hopeless. The pirates whipped, beat, and cut these men cruelly, and at last set fire to their vessel, and left them to burn and perish. They soon after burnt and sank several New England sloops; a vessel of Jamaica they generously sent back to her master, and two other vessels they fitted up for their own use, mounting one with eight carriage and ten swivel guns.
With this little fleet, Admiral Lowther, in the Happy Delivery, went to the gulf of Matique to careen, carrying ashore all their sails and stores, and putting them in tents on the beach. While the ships, however, were on the keel, and the men busy heaving, scrubbing, and tallowing, they were attacked by a large body of the natives. Burning the Happy Delivery, their largest ship, and leaving all their stores behind, they then turned one sloop adrift, and all embarked in the other, the Ranger. This disaster, and the shortness of provisions, soon produced mutiny and mutual recrimination.
In May 1721 they went to the West Indies, capturing a brigantine, which they plundered and sank, and then started for New England. Low and Lowther always quarrelling, at last parted, Low taking forty-four hands in the brigantine, and leaving the same number in the sloop to Lowther. The latter for some time captured nothing but fishing vessels, and a New England ship with a cargo of sugar from Barbadoes. Off the coast of South Carolina, being pursued by an English vessel that he had imprudently attacked, he was driven on shore in his attempts to escape. The English captain, in attempting to board, was shot, and his mate declined the combat. The pirate sloop soon put again to sea, but much shattered, and with many of the crew killed and wounded. The winter Low spent in repairing, in an inlet of North Carolina, where his men pitched tents, and lived on the wild cattle they shot in the woods, while in very cold nights they slept on board the ship.
After a cruise round Newfoundland the pirates sailed for the West Indies, and put into a creek in the island of Blanco, not far from Tortuga, to careen. Here they were attacked by the Eagle sloop of Barbadoes, belonging to the South Sea Company. She fired a gun first to make Lowther show his colours, and then boarded. Lowther and twelve of his crew made their escape out of a cabin window after their vessel had struck. The master of the Eagle, with twenty-five men, spent five days in search of the fugitives, and, capturing eight only of them, returned to Cumana.
The Spanish governor applauding the Eagle condemned the sloop, and sent a small vessel with twenty-five hands to scour the patches of lignum vitæ trees that covered the low level island, and took four pirates, but Lowther and three men and a boy still escaped. It is supposed he then destroyed himself, as he was found soon after by some sailors dead, beside a bush, with a burst pistol by his side. Of his companions nine were hung at St. Christopher's, two pardoned, and five acquitted; four the Spaniards condemned to slavery for life, three to the galleys, and the others to the Castle of Arraria.
Captain Spriggs was another of this same gang, having been quartermaster to Lowther. In 1723 Spriggs, with eighteen men, sailed by night from the coast of Guinea, in the Delight (a man-of-war) taken by Low, for they had quarrelled as to the punishment of a pirate who had murdered another. Low was for mercy and Spriggs for the yard-arm.