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At the very first discharge of their pistols Blackbeard had been shot through the body, but he was not for giving up for that–not he. As said before, he was of the true roaring, raging breed of pirates, and stood up to it until he received twenty more cutlass cuts and five additional shots, and then fell dead while trying to fire off an empty pistol. After that the lieutenant cut off the pirate’s head, and sailed away in triumph, with the bloody trophy nailed to the bow of his battered sloop.

Those of Blackbeard’s men who were not killed were carried off to Virginia, and all of them tried and hanged but one or two, their names, no doubt, still standing in a row in the provincial records.

But did Blackbeard really bury treasures, as tradition says, along the sandy shores he haunted?

Master Clement Downing, midshipman aboard the Salisbury, wrote a book after his return from the cruise to Madagascar, whither the Salisbury had been ordered, to put an end to the piracy with which those waters were infested. He says:

“At Guzarat I met with a Portuguese named Anthony de
Sylvestre; he came with two other Portuguese and two
Dutchmen to take on in the Moor’s service, as many Europeans
do. This Anthony told me he had been among the pirates, and
that he belonged to one of the sloops in Virginia when
Blackbeard was taken. He informed me that if it should be my
lot ever to go to York River or Maryland, near an island
called Mulberry Island, provided we went on shore at the
watering place, where the shipping used most commonly to
ride, that there the pirates had buried considerable sums of
money in great chests well clamped with iron plates. As to
my part, I never was that way, nor much acquainted with any
that ever used those parts; but I have made inquiry, and am
informed that there is such a place as Mulberry Island. If
any person who uses those parts should think it worth while
to dig a little way at the upper end of a small cove, where
it is convenient to land, he would soon find whether the
information I had was well grounded. Fronting the landing
place are five trees, among which, he said, the money was
hid. I cannot warrant the truth of this account; but if I
was ever to go there, I should find some means or other to
satisfy myself, as it could not be a great deal out of my
way. If anybody should obtain the benefit of this account,
if it please God that they ever come to England, ’tis hoped
they will remember whence they had this information.”

Another worthy was Capt. Edward Low, who learned his trade of sail-making at good old Boston town, and piracy at Honduras. No one stood higher in the trade than he, and no one mounted to more lofty altitudes of bloodthirsty and unscrupulous wickedness. ‘Tis strange that so little has been written and sung of this man of might, for he was as worthy of story and of song as was Blackbeard.

It was under a Yankee captain that he made his first cruise–down to Honduras, for a cargo of logwood, which in those times was no better than stolen from the Spanish folk.

One day, lying off the shore, in the Gulf of Honduras, comes Master Low and the crew of the whaleboat rowing across from the beach, where they had been all morning chopping logwood.

“What are you after?” says the captain, for they were coming back with nothing but themselves in the boat.

“We’re after our dinner,” says Low, as spokesman of the party.

“You’ll have no dinner,” says the captain, “until you fetch off another load.”