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Updated: May 21, 2025
The learning already acquired he began to pass on to Joe Hawkridge, who was a zealous pupil and determined to read and write and cipher without letting the grass grow under his feet.
"I was trying to persuade myself that it was they who were in peril from us, but you put it differently." "It might be as you wish if you had twenty-five or fifty men; but with less than a dozen, and more than twice that number looking for you, discretion is the better part of valor." "Tell me, Hawkridge, how all this interesting information came to you," continued Capt. Asbury.
Men walked in restless circles, looking up at the stars, muttering to themselves, or scanning the sea which had known their crimes and follies. Joe Hawkridge scooped out a bed for himself in the sand and dropped off to sleep by spells, with dreams of ease and quiet ashore and learning to be a gentleman. It was daylight when shouts startled him. The other derelicts were in a frenzy of agitation.
Joe Hawkridge had nothing more to say about enduring it a month o' Sundays. While the brig remained at anchor they clung to the thought that Captain Stede Bonnet might intervene in their behalf. It did bring them a gleam of solace to imagine him hoisting sail on the Revenge and crowding out to rake the brig with his formidable broadsides.
The trumpet call of duty invigorated him. He was no longer a useless lump. The color returned to his cheek as he crawled from under the boat and shakily hauled himself to his feet. Joe Hawkridge nodded approval and exhorted: "A stiff upper lip, my gallant young gentleman. Steady she goes, an' not too hasty. Ned Rackham is as sharp as a whetted sword. Ware ye, boy, lest he pick up the scent.
He fought to free himself but the breath was fairly choked out of him. Joe Hawkridge was desperately thrashing about in the swamp, gasping and snorting, his cries also smothered. In a twinkling they were captives, their arms tightly bound behind them, the stifling grip of their necks unrelaxed. Weakened almost to suffocation, the two lads could make no lively resistance.
"Oh, we shall rake them all, but Blackbeard may have changed that crotchety mind of his and taken the men back to his ship." "I fear I have seen the last of my dear Joe Hawkridge," exclaimed Jack. "From what you tell me, the young scamp is not so easily disposed of," smiled Captain Bonnet. "I must haul out to sea ere long. 'Tis poor business to let Blackbeard glimpse my spars and so take warning."
Presently Joe Hawkridge footed it up the main shrouds to scan the sea ahead and try to get a glimpse of that sandy bit of exposed shoal on which he had been marooned. This would enable him to find the entrance to the outer channel and so con the brigantine in from seaward.
With emotions beyond the power of speech, they stared at the pinnace as the oars splashed on the return journey to the Revenge. Joe Hawkridge wept a little, perplexed that men could be so cruel to their own shipmates. And yet what could be expected of pirates debased enough to be Blackbeard's loyal followers?
The weather favored it, heat in the air and little wind. The mist seemed also to rise from the water, hanging low but as thick as a summer fog. It shrouded the coast and Blackbeard's ship and crept out across the harbor until the brig was enveloped in it. "'Twas like this when we swum ashore and found the pirogue, Cap'n Bonnet," said Joe Hawkridge. "A curious kind o' white smother from the swamp."
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