Part Four
...After [Cyprian] Southack returned to Boston,
however, there appeared a sinister character on Cape Cod, a man who had the
dress and appearance of a pirate. This is not idle hearsay, but the fact is recorded
by the local historians for Massachusetts Historical Society, and it is
published in the year 1793 by that organization where you may read it today.
Year after year this unusual person would appear at
Billingsgate, and for a few days would be seen out in the vicinity of the
Whidah's wreck. Then he would disappear just as mysteriously, and be gone for
12 more months.
Who was this mysterious person and what eventually
happened to him?...
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One October day in the year 1782, a resident of Eastham,
after a great storm, decided to hike down along the beach toward the lower
Cape, and reached the scene where the Whidah had been wrecked around 7pm that
night. Far in the distance he saw a bonfire, and hastened toward it. Upon
drawing closer, he discovered the same mysterious character known to almost
every resident of that section.
This sinister individual, with a cocked pistol at his
side, was three feet down, in a hole in the sand, and had just struck the top
of a chest. The Eastham resident, in his excitement, dislodged a bit of
material from the top of the cliff where he was walking, and the pirate, with
an oath, sprang for his pistol.
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The Cape Cod resident ran for the underbrush and
escaped, but not before a close call from one of the pirate's bullets. He
returned several days later by daytime, but never found anything. The pirate
was later found dead by the roadside with gold doubloons in his money belt.
- from the Boston Sunday Post, Edward
Rowe Snow, September 28, 1947.
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