Captain Kidd, who sailed in these parts, was not so ferocious as Blackbeard. It is said that at first he always swore-in his crew on the Bible, but afterwards finding this interfered with business, he buried his Bible in the sand. Captain Low captured a fishing-smack off these islands, but disappointed of booty, had the crew flogged, and then gave each man the alternative of being hanged or of three times vigorously cursing old Cotton Mather, which latter, it is recorded, "all did with alacrity." It is probable this punishment was inflicted by the pirate because it was the custom of the Puritan clergymen, when pirates were condemned, to have them brought into church, and as a proper preliminary to the hanging, preach long and powerful sermons to them on the enormity of their crimes and the torments awaiting in the next world. This same Captain Low is said to have once captured a Virginia vessel, and was so pleased with her captain that he invited him to share a bowl of punch. The Virginian, however, demurred, having scruples about drinking with a pirate, whereupon Low presented a cocked pistol to his ear and a glass of punch to his mouth, pleasantly remarking: "Either take one or the other." The captain took punch. Another rover of the seas, Phillips, captured the Dolphin, a fishing-vessel, and made all her crew turn pirates. John Fillmore, one of them, started a mutiny, killed Phillips, and took the Dolphin back to Boston. His great-great-grandson was President Millard Fillmore. There was also at one time a famous woman pirate in this region--Anne Bonney, an Irish girl from Cork, who fell in love with Captain Rockham, a pirate, who was afterwards captured and hanged. Before the capture she fought bravely, and, as she expressed it, "was one of the last men left upon the deck." There was much that was fascinating in the desperate careers of the lawless buccaneers who swept the New England coasts in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. They were for years masters of the ocean, and they even sent defiance to the King himself: "Go tell the King of England, go tell him thus from me, Though he reigns king o'er all the land, I will reign king at sea." All around the Isles of Shoals, when the sun sinks and twilight comes-- "From the dim headlands many a lighthouse gleams, The street lamps of the ocean."