Cape Cod sailors were in like degree, and with varying success, using their wits to elude pirates of the farther seas, swift Chinese lorchas, and low-hung craft in the Malay Straits. A Truro captain, commanding the Southern Cross, was shot by pirates in the China Sea in the presence of his wife. A Falmouth whaling captain, by his skill and coolness, saved his men from massacre by natives of the Marshall Islands. A Dennis captain, in 1820, had been murdered by pirates off Madeira. Another Dennis captain, of the barque Lubra, lost his life as late as 1865, when, one day out of Hong Kong, he was overhauled by so large a force of pirates that resistance was hopeless. Some of the crew took to the rigging, and two of them were shot there; others jumped overboard and were picked up by the pirates, who boarded the barque and proceeded to ransack her. The captain, whom they found in the cabin with his wife and child, they shot dead. Then, having stolen all valuables, destroyed the boats and nautical instruments, and set fire to the ship, they made off, leaving the crew to their fate. But with true Cape Cod pluck, the survivors of the tragedy managed to save the ship and somehow navigated her back to Hong Kong. They were now sailing seas the world over, these Cape Cod men: farmers, fishermen, whalers as they had been, they were manning merchant ships that were carrying the American flag into every port. Yet from the first they had furnished some seamen for the traders: for as early as 1650, it is said, both at Saint Christopher’s and Barbadoes, “New England produce was in great demand”; and Gorhams and Dimmocks of Barnstable had acquired fortunes in the coasting and West Indies trade. An interesting little industry, in addition to fishing on the Banks, was carried on by a few boats that were fitted out to go to the Labrador coast to collect, on the rocky islands offshore, feathers and eider-down for the Cape Cod housewives. There, in the nesting-season, were held great battues, when the birds were killed wholesale with clubs or brooms made of spruce branches. Rich tells us that the sack that left home filled with straw returned filled with down for bed and pillows, “the latter called ‘pillow bears,’ and apostrophized by the old people as ‘pille’bers.’” Mountainous beds of feathers or down were then in order, and “boys used to joke about rigging a jury-mast and rattle down the shrouds to climb into bed.” Two Barnstable men, we know, coopers and farmers by trade, went on some of these “feather voyages,” which, however, were not long continued, as the merciless slaughter made the birds wary of their old haunts.