The Jolly Roger Tales: 60+ Pirate Novels, Treasure-Hunt Tales & Sea Adventures. Лаймен Фрэнк Баум

in the boat with us. He shakes in his boots at the sound of ye."

      "What's the game, lad? Have ye taken a ship of your own to scour the Main?"

      Jack ignored this good-natured badinage and, in dignified accents, told them to come ashore and take him off to the Royal James. In this company he had a reputation to live up to as a man of parts and valor. They let the boat ground on the smooth sand and one of them lighted a torch of pitch-pine splinters. The fine young gentleman who had strolled arm-in-arm with Stede Bonnet to the tavern green was a ragged scarecrow and bedaubed with red clay and black mud. This aroused their sympathy before he told them of his escape from the Revenge and his adventures with Bill Saxby and the crippled buccaneer. In their turn they explained how Captain Bonnet had sent them down the river to await the return of the two men who were now stranded in the wilderness two days' march distant.

      "And why did your captain shift the brig from her anchorage off the island?" asked Jack.

      This amused the boat's crew who nudged each other and were evasive until the master's mate who was in charge went far enough to say:

      "A sloop came in from the Pamlico River. Our ship sought a snugger harbor, d'ye see? There was some private business. We loaded the sloop with hogshead of sugar, and bolts of damask, and silver ingots. His Excellency, Governor Eden, of the North Carolina Province, turns an honest penny now and then."

      "The Governor of this Province is a partner in piracy?" cried Jack.

      "Brawl it not so loud, nor spill it to Cap'n Bonnet," cautioned the master's mate. "I confide this much to stave off your foolish questions when ye board the ship."

      There was no reason to tarry in the bay and the boat pulled out to follow the course of the river and return in haste to the brig Royal James in her more secluded harbor. The news that Blackbeard was at his old rendezvous within easy sail to the southward eclipsed all other topics. And when it was learned that he had lost the two sloops of his squadron, there was fierce delight. Although the Revenge was a larger vessel and more heavily manned and gunned, they were hilariously confident of victory. It was a burning grudge and a private quarrel, and fuel was added to the flame by the tidings that a score or more of seamen had been mercilessly marooned to perish because of their suspected preference for Captain Stede Bonnet.

      When Jack Cockrell caught sight of the shapely brig as she loomed in the morning haze, it seemed as though years had passed since he had enviously watched her pass out over the Charles Town bar. Presently he spied the soldierly captain on the quarter-deck, his spare figure all taut and erect, his chin clean-shaven, his queue powdered, his apparel fresh and in good taste. A ship is like her master and the watch was sluicing down decks or setting up the rigging which had slackened with the heavy dew. Jack felt ashamed to let himself be seen. This was no place for a ragamuffin.

      Captain Bonnet strode to the gangway and stared down at this bit of human flotsam. He was quick to recognize his boyish friend and admirer and ordered the men to lower a boatswain's chair and lift Master Cockrell aboard. Jack was, indeed, so stiffened and sore and weary that he had been wondering how he could climb the side of a ship.

      "Tut, tut, my son, bide your time," exclaimed Stede Bonnet as they met on deck. "Tell it later. The master's mate will enlighten me."

      He led the way into the cabin which was in order and simply furnished. One servant brewed fragrant coffee from Arabia while another made a room ready for the guest and fetched clean clothing from the captain's chests and a tub of hot water. And as soon as the grateful Master Cockrell had made himself presentable, he was invited to sit down at table with the captain and enjoy a meal of porridge and crisp English bacon and fresh eggs from the ship's hen-coop in the long-boat and hot crumpets and marmalade. And this after the pinched ration of mouldy salt-horse and wormy hard-bread! Captain Bonnet lighted a roll of tobacco leaves, which he called a cigarro, and puffed clouds of smoke while Master Cockrell cleaned every dish and lamented that his skin felt too tight to begin all over again.

      He was now in a mood to relate his strange yarn, from its outset in the ill-fated merchant trader, Plymouth Adventure. Eagerly he begged information concerning her people after their shipwreck, but Captain Bonnet had been cruising far offshore to intercept a convoy of rich West Indiamen from Jamaica for the old country.

      "I will make it my duty to set you ashore at Charles Town, Master Jack," said he, "and I pray you may find your good uncle alive and still vowing to hang all rogues of pirates."

      "But I must sail with you, sir, till you have saved Joe Hawkridge and his shipmates and blown Blackbeard out of water."

      "Rest easy on that," exclaimed Stede Bonnet. "Those affairs are most urgent. My ship will drop down the river to-day, with the turn o' the tide, and heave to long enough to land a party, six men, to go in search of Trimble Rogers who is the apple of my eye. I shall not ask you to join them, but you can give directions and pen a fair map, I trow."

      "Gladly would I go," replied Jack, "but my poor legs wobble like your valiant old buccaneer's. And my feet are raw."

      "You have proved yourself," was the fine compliment. "I judged ye aright when we first met."

      Soon the deck above them resounded to the tramp of boots and the thump of sheet-blocks as the brisk seamen made ready to cast the ship free. She was in competent hands and so Stede Bonnet lingered below to enjoy talking with the youth whose manners and breeding were like his own. In a mood unusually confidential he confirmed Jack's earlier impressions, that he was a pirate with a certain code of honor which reminded one of Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest who robbed the rich and befriended the poor. Touching on his mortal quarrel with Blackbeard, he revealed how that traitorous ruffian had proposed a partnership while he, Stede Bonnet, was a novice at the trade. The plot all hatched to take Bonnet's fine ship, the Revenge, from him, Blackbeard had disclosed his hand at the final conference when he said, with a sarcastic grimace:

      "I see, my good sir, that you are not used to the cares and duties of commanding a vessel, so I will relieve you of 'em."

      As soon as Captain Bonnet had mended his fortunes and had the goodly brig Royal James to cruise in, his ruling purpose was to regain the Revenge from Blackbeard and at the same time wreak a proper punishment.

      "So now if we can trap this black-hearted Teach before he flits to sea," said Stede Bonnet, "you will see a pretty engagement, Master Cockrell. But first we must find the score o' men that he marooned. It will be a deed of mercy, besides affording me a stronger crew."

      The brig was soon standing down the river while the landing party broke out an ample store of provisions and powder and ball, with canvas for a tent. The plan was for them to pitch a camp near the shore of the bay to which they could fetch back Trimble Rogers and Bill Saxby and there wait for their ship to return and take them off. They were ready to go ashore when Captain Bonnet's navigator ordered the main-topsail laid aback and the brig slowly swung into the wind. The delay was brief and no sooner was the boat cast off than the Royal James proceeded on the voyage to Cherokee Inlet.

      Clumsy as those sailing ships of two hundred years ago appear to modern eyes, their lines were finely moulded under water and with a favoring wind they could log a fair distance in a day's run. It goes without saying that this tall brig was shoved along for all she was worth before a humming breeze that made her creak, and during the night she was reckoned to be a few miles to seaward of the sandy islands which extended like a barrier outside of Cherokee Inlet. Jack Cockrell stood a watch of his own, dead weary but with no thought of sleep until he could hear the lookout shout "Land ho!"

      This cry came from aloft soon after dawn. The brig moved toward the nearest of these exposed shoals while her officers consulted a chart spread upon the cabin roof. They were wary of running the ship aground with Blackbeard no more than a few miles distant. So bare were these yellow patches of sand that showed against the green water that a group of men on any one of them would have been easily discernible. The Royal James coasted along outside of them under shortened sail but discovered nothing to indicate a party of marooned seamen.

      "But they must be out here somewhere," cried Jack Cockrell, in great distress.