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"He is too pretty to be risked in such a slaughter pen. I own up to feelin' squeamish on my own account, hardy pirate though I be." "This Lieutenant Maynard is welcome to measure swords with Blackbeard," said Jack, "and I shall not quarrel with him for the honor. Pick me a pirate with a wooden leg, Joe, or one that still shakes with Spanish fever."
Peter Forbes gazed aghast, with slackened jaw, expecting to see his mad nephew cut down by the sweep of a broadsword, but Blackbeard merely grinned and slapped the lad half-way across the deck with a buffet of his open hand. Dizzily Jack picked himself up and was furiously scolded by his uncle. Their lives hung by a hair and this was no time to play the fool.
'But I am not a murderess, replied Elvira. 'That is more than I could swear for, said Blackbeard. 'At least I never killed my sister, rejoined Elvira. 'What do you mean to insinuate by that? asked the Pirate as his muscular frame trembled with a sort of indefinable emotion.
"He thought," said Dickory, not in the least abashed by his reproof, "that the Revenge was commanded by your father, for he sprang upon the deck, shouting for the captain, and when he saw Blackbeard I heard him exclaim in surprise, 'A sugar-planter!" "And he would have killed my father?" said Kate, turning pale at the thought.
The impulse was to dash into the forepeak and so plunge overboard, flinging away all caution, but before their palsied muscles could respond, the behavior of Blackbeard held them irresolute and curious. He had turned his back to them and was shouting boisterously to others to follow him. Seven men came through the doorway, one after the other, hanging back with evident reluctance.
But with "Blackbeard" it is different, for in him we have a real, ranting, raging, roaring pirate per se one who really did bury treasure, who made more than one captain walk the plank, and who committed more private murders than he could number on the fingers of both hands; one who fills, and will continue to fill, the place to which he has been assigned for generations, and who may be depended upon to hold his place in the confidence of others for generations to come.
Hurrah! Hurrah!" "The dirty Satan!" exclaimed Dickory, as he gazed after Blackbeard's boat. "I would kill him if I could." "Say not so, Dickory," said Captain Bonnet, speaking gravely. "That great pirate is not a man of breeding, and he speaks with disesteem alike of friend and enemy, but he is the famous Blackbeard, and we must treat him with honour although he pays us none."
THE dark cloud of anxiety was lightened a trifle by the fact that Blackbeard displayed no ill temper toward the two young castaways. Having obtained such information as they chose to offer, he roughly told them to go forward and join the crew.
The night before the day of the action in which he was killed he sat up drinking with some congenial company until broad daylight. One of them asked him if his poor young wife knew where his treasure was hidden. "No," says Blackbeard; "nobody but the devil and I knows where it is, and the longest liver shall have all."
"Hook your fish before you fry 'em," replied the sagacious apprentice-boy. "This scrummage with the Revenge will be no dancin' heel-and-toe. A bigger ship, more guns and men, and a Blackbeard who will fight like a demon when he's cornered. Crazy though he may be, he is the most dangerous pirate afloat."
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