Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 17, 2025
To be captured by Blackbeard was a finer adventure than strutting arm-in-arm with Captain Stede Bonnet. It was mournful, indeed, that Captain Wellsby should have to lose his ship but 'tis an ill wind that blows nobody good and the voyage to England, which Jack had loathed from the bottom of his heart, was indefinitely postponed.
The pirate skipper rammed a hand in his pocket and flung a shower of gold coins at the derelict seaman while the crowd cheered the generous deed. It was easy to guess why Stede Bonnet was something of a hero in Charles Town. He passed on and turned into the street.
Them eight men aboard that brig, now never was a rougher piece o' piracy since Morgan's day than his makin' those beggars walk the plank. Stood there an' roared an' laughed, he did, an' pricked 'em behind till they tipped the board. An' then to stop us from drownin' a blasted little rat that'd tried to kill us all! Oh, he's bad, is Stede bad!" Jeremy gave a start as this soliloquy progressed.
Some time after they had begun this work, a young man, who was a cripple, and therefore a non-combatant, hobbled into the hall, and announced the fact that Haldor's fleet was routed everywhere, and fleeing. He had seen it from the cliff behind the stede, and indeed it could partly be seen from the hall window.
And eager eyes were able to discern the yellow spars and blurred hull of the Revenge against the gloomy background. Stede Bonnet's brig was, of course, pricked out much more sharply with the seaward horizon behind her. To her crew, in this hushed morning, there came a prolonged, shrill note that was like the call of a bird. It trilled with a silvery sweetness and was repeated over and over again.
This well-tried pirate captain Stede Bonnet, as we shall call him, notwithstanding his assumption of another name was in a genial mood as he drank in the morning air.
There would have been some stir or signal, even if men were too weak to stand. The air was clear and from the brig's masts it was possible to sweep every foot of sandy surface. Here was another mystery of the sea. It occurred to Stede Bonnet to ask: "You took it for granted they were marooned, Jack, when the boats passed from your sight and you were hidden in the tree in the swamp.
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.
"Was this the once respectable Stede Bonnet?" asked Dame Charter to herself. "Did such a man marry my sister!" thought Mr. Delaplaine. They might have been surprised had they met him as a pirate, but his appearance as a pirate's clerk amazed them. Towards the end of the day Mr. Delaplaine and his party returned to the Belinda, for there was no fit place for them to lodge in the town.
It had been reckoned that two days would suffice to bring them to the bay in which Stede Bonnet's ship was anchored. By noon of this first day, however, it was plainly evident that Trimble Rogers was done for. He uttered no complaints, and withheld the groans behind his set teeth, but his lank body was a-tremble with pain and fatigue.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking