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They sailed down the coast for 150 miles,
entered the river Delaware, and rowed up to Newcastle, and there seized
a shallop. The news of this enterprise was quickly spread abroad, and roused the
whole coast. Going down the river again, still in their open boat, they took
another sloop belonging to a mulatto called Black Robbin. They changed into this
sloop, and next day met with another sloop from Hull, which suited their purpose
better. By now the country was much alarmed, and the Government sent out H.M.S.
Phœnix, of twenty guns, to cruise in search of the pirates.
In the meantime the
latter sailed to the Bahama Islands and took another sloop and a brigantine.
Worley now commanded a tidy craft of six guns and a crew of twenty-five men, and
flew a black ensign with a white death's head upon it. So far all had gone well
with the pirates, but one day, when cruising off the Cape of Virginia, Worley
sighted two sloops as he thought making for the James River, but which were
really armed vessels sent in search of him. Worley stood in to cut them off,
little dreaming what they really were. The two sloops and the pirate ship all
standing in together, Worley hoisted his black flag.
This terrified the
inhabitants of Jamestown, who thought that three pirates were about to attack
them. Hurried preparations for defence were made, when all of a sudden the
people on shore were surprised to see the supposed pirates fighting amongst
themselves. No quarter was asked, and the pirates were all killed in
hand-to-hand fighting except Captain Worley and one other pirate, who were
captured alive but desperately wounded. The formalities were quickly got through
for trying these two men, so that next day they were hanged before death from
their wounds could save them from their just punishment. "Thus," writes Captain
Johnson, "Worley's beginning was bold and desperate, his course short and
prosperous, and his end bloody and disgraceful.
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