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Having carried out our plan for eluding the brig, and being by this time well to windward of the spot where we parted company with her, I considered we might now with safety bear away upon our course, which we accordingly did directly after breakfast, setting our balloon gaff- topsail once more, and getting the spinnaker to the bowsprit-end again.
A man was stationed at the bowsprit-end, and another at the mast-head, to give notice of any rocks beneath the water which might lie in our course; but Captain Helfrich seemed scarcely to require such information. The little schooner threaded the narrow and intricate passage with unerring accuracy, every instant the rapidity of her progress being increased by the freshening wind.
While this was happening, the corposant on the bowsprit-end also let go its hold and came floating inboard along the spar, causing a regular stampede of the watch, who incontinently came rushing aft as far as the mainmast, to get out of the way of their uncanny visitor, which, however, vanished as it reached the knightheads.
When Bob called me at midnight, however, the wind had hauled so far round from the eastward that it became necessary to shift the spinnaker to the bowsprit-end; and this we accordingly did. The wind had fallen much lighter while I was below, it continued to drop all my watch, and when I turned out next morning there was barely enough of it to fan us along at about three knots.
Then, when the two craft were not more than fifteen feet apart, the schooner's head fell off, she turned broadside-on to the sea, and, our people smartly hauling down our fore-staysail, the brigantine drew slowly ahead and clear of us, our bowsprit-end missing her mainboom by the merest hairbreadth, and the danger was over.
At 2 it flew about at once to the south-south-west and rained very hard. The wind settled some time at west-south-west, and we steered east-north-east till 3 in the morning: then, the wind and rain abating, we steered east half north for fear of coming near the land. Presently after, it being a little clear, the man at the bowsprit-end called out, "Land on our starboard bow."
Upon the windlass, the bulwarks, the fore-mast shrouds, around the head, and out to the bowsprit-end, was a continuous swarm of human forms, so thickly clustered that scarce any part of the vessel could be seen, except the fore-mast, with its spars and rigging towering high above.
This man, well cased in oilskin, stationed himself at the bowsprit-end which being just beyond the reach of the spray from the bows, was possibly as dry a place as there was throughout the ship, excepting, perhaps, her cabin and sitting astride the spar and wedging his back firmly in between the two parts of the double fore-stay, found himself so comfortably situated that in less than five minutes he was sound asleep.
After his men had been healed at Bath-town, the lieutenant proceeded to Virginia, with the head of Black Beard still suspended on his bowsprit-end, as a trophy of his victory, to the great joy of all the inhabitants. The prisoners were tried, condemned, and executed; and thus all the crew of that infernal miscreant, Black Beard, were destroyed, except two.
Accordingly, before relieving Bob at the tiller, I roused out our spinnaker again; and as we had hauled up a couple of points for Beachy Head just as I came on deck, I got it to the bowsprit-end and set it, with its sheet led aft to the main-boom-end, in place of the jib, which, with the foresail, I stowed.
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