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Before the boat was half-way from the vessel, he perceived that these were no sedate seamen from the Massachusetts Colony, even though they were in dungaree and round straw hats. He was gazing at some of Ned Rackham's evil pirates whom he had last beheld on the shattered deck of the Plymouth Adventure where they had been left to build a raft for themselves! The devil had looked after his own.
But some kind of a dratted cross-current ketched me and I'm sailin' out to sea, I finds, without compass or cross-staff. Bound to get to London River, eh, Jack, same as we started out on the silly little raft." "Whew, this adventure was bad enough," cried Jack, "but when you saw Ned Rackham's pirates in the boat, and you couldn't run away, I wonder, honest, Joe, you didn't die of fright."
And the Plymouth Adventure had disappeared leaving no trace excepting scattered bits of floating wreckage. The pirate ship headed to follow the coast to the northward, on the chance that Ned Rackham's prize crew might have made a landing elsewhere. To Jack Cockrell the gift of life had been miraculously vouchsafed him and he felt secure for the moment.
At first I had carried sweetmeats to our tryst, which were accepted with moderate pleasure, but one morning I had taken a huge volume of Rackham's Mother Goose which Nickols had brought me, and from then on our hour had been one of spiritual communion.
Blast it, Jack, my hearty, stock us up and we could lie tucked in the forepeak for a month o' Sundays." "But the rats and the darkness and the stinks, and to be expecting discovery," was Jack's dreary comment. "It would ha' looked like a parlor to me when I was on that barren cay and sighted Ned Rackham's rogues coming off from the snow," said the other stowaway.
"'Tis a disappointment for all of us, this tangle with Rackham's crew, but why any worse for you?" "I can't tell it all, Peter, but my life is forfeit once they lay hands on me." "What tarradiddle is this? As I remember it in the Revenge, when all hands of us were cruisin' together, ye had no mortal enemies." "It happened in the Plymouth Adventure," answered Joe.
Let Rackham's crew suspect I am leaving a man behind and they will rout you out." "And they all love me, like a parson loves a pirate," grinned Joe. "I shot 'em full of spikes and bolts from a nine-pounder in the Plymouth Adventure." "I shall use my best endeavor, so help me," sighed Peter Tobey.
"But, harkee, Joe, you will die in slow misery. Better a quick bullet from Rackham's pistol." "Find some way to send off a little food and water, Peter, and I will set tight on this desert island. And mayhap you will dance at the end of a rope afore I shuffle off." "A hard request, Joe," replied the puzzled Tobey. "Unless I can come off again with some of our own men, how can it be done?
The carpenter's mate waded out to join his companions who were amiably conversing with Ned Rackham's pirates. They had all been shipmates either in the Revenge or the Triumph sloop and there was boisterous curiosity concerning the divers adventures while they had been apart. Rackham's crew had been reduced to eighteen men when they were lucky enough to capture the snow, it was learned.
"Set me ashore and I will confer with him." Grudgingly Rackham consented, unwilling to have a hitch in the negotiations. In a somber humor, the carpenter's mate returned to his impatient comrades on the island. They crowded about him and he briefly delivered the message, that they were desired to cruise under Ned Rackham's flag. This delighted them, as the only way out of a fatal dilemma.
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