Blackbeard: Buccaneer Part 10

The boat's crew laughed at this as they reached out to lay hold of the raft while the two lads leaped aboard. Joe Hawkridge carried it off with rough bravado as though glad to be among his pals again. They eyed Jack c.o.c.krell with quizzical interest and he did his best to be at ease, permitting Joe to vouch for him as a young gentleman with a taste for piracy who had won Blackbeard's favor in the _Plymouth Adventure_. They were plied with eager questions regarding the fate of the merchant ship and Ned Rackham's prize crew. It was a chance to rehea.r.s.e the tale as they had concocted it, and it seemed to hang together well enough to satisfy these simple rogues.

In his turn, Joe Hawkridge demanded to know the gossip of the _Revenge_.

The storm had sobered Blackbeard, it seemed, and he had displayed the skill of a masterly seaman in bringing them safely through. In toiling for their own lives, the men had forgotten their brawls and plots and guzzling. And the great wind had blown the ship clear of Spanish fever.

There were no new cases and the invalids were gaining strength. Fresh food and sweet water were needed and the opinion was that Blackbeard now steered for an old rendezvous of his on the North Carolina coast where his sloops would meet him if they were still afloat.

Jack c.o.c.krell found his courage returning as he clambered up the side of the _Revenge_ and followed Joe aft to the quarter-deck. Unless they bungled it, there was a chance that they might escape when the pirates made their landing on the coast to refresh themselves and refit the ship. The mate on watch greeted them good-humoredly enough and bade them enter the cabin where the captain awaited them. Jack was all a-flutter again but he managed to imitate Joe's careless swagger.

Blackbeard lounged at his ease in a huge chair of carven ebony which might have been filched from some stately East Indiaman or a ship of the Grand Mogul himself. He had flung off his coat and the sleeves of a shirt of damask silk were rolled to the elbow. Instead of the great, mildewed sea-boots he wore slippers of crimson leather embroidered with threads of gold. Gorgeous cushions, pieces of plate, costly apparel strewed the cabin in barbaric confusion.

What the two lads gazed at, however, was this bizarre figure of a despot who held the power of life and death. It was one of his quieter interludes when he laid aside the ferocious and bombastic play-acting which made it hard to discover whether he was very cunning or half-mad.

The immense beard flowed down his chest instead of being tricked out in gaudy ribbons. He was idly running a comb through it when his small, rum-reddened eyes took in the two lads in dripping clothes who were shoved toward him by the sentry guarding the hatch.

Blackbeard let a hairy hand stray to clutch one of the pistols kept on the table beside him. Jack c.o.c.krell gulped and stole a frightened glance at Joe Hawkridge who winked and nudged him. There was some small comfort in this. Spellbound, they stared at the pistol and then at the pirate's ma.s.sive forearm on which a skull and cross-bones was p.r.i.c.ked in India ink. At this moment Jack earnestly wished himself back on the raft. The barrel of the pistol looked as big as a blunderbuss.

With a yawn, Blackbeard reached for a silver bowl of Brazil nuts, cracked one of them with the pistol-b.u.t.t and roared for the black cabin boy who came running with a flask of Canary wine and a goblet. Jack c.o.c.krell's sigh of relief sounded like a porpoise coming up for air. He was not to be shot at once. Suddenly Blackbeard exclaimed, in that husky, growling voice of his:

"I saw you rascals through the gla.s.s before I came below. What of the ship I left ye in? Briefly now, and no lies."

Together the lads pieced out the narrative as they had hastily prepared it. The vital thing was to watch lest they tell a word too much. Jack stumbled once or twice but his comrade covered it adroitly, and they did not betray themselves. The sweat trickled into their eyes but the heat of the cabin was excuse for this. Blackbeard studied them intently, munching Brazil nuts and noisily sipping his wine.

"The _Plymouth Adventure_ stranded yester-eve?" said he. "Know ye the lay of the coast where the wreck lies? What of the shipmaster and Ned Rackham? Were they able to fix the shoal by reckoning?"

"No, sir," readily answered Joe Hawkridge. "'Twas strange land to all hands."

From a chest Blackbeard hauled out a dog-eared chart of parchment and unrolled it upon the table. The boys foresaw his intention and feared the worst. Presently they heard him mumble to himself:

"A small wind setting from the west'ard,--twenty-four hours of drift for the lads' raft,--a dozen leagues, I call it."

He looked up from the chart to ask:

"The wreck was lodged fast in smooth water and holding together?"

"Aye, but in peril of working off and sinking like an iron pot,"

answered Joe. "For this reason the people were in haste to quit her."

"Her own crew made for the beach, I have no doubt," shrewdly pursued Blackbeard, "but my men 'ud stay by the wreck and watch the weather ere they shoved off. Trust the food and drink and plunder to hold 'em."

He lumbered to the hatch and called up to the mate on watch. While they conferred, Joe Hawkridge whispered to his perturbed companion:

"He will hunt for the wreck, Jack. But unless the wind changes, he can't beat in to the coast with his fore-topmast gone."

"A merciful delay," muttered Jack. "I worry not so much for Captain Wellsby and his people. They will hide themselves well inland when they make out the _Revenge_, but what of you and me?"

"'Tis a vexing life we lead. I will say that much, Master c.o.c.krell."

CHAPTER VII

THE MIST OF THE CHEROKEE SWAMP

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. Whether or no, Jack was impressed as a pirate and it may have amused Blackbeard to recruit by force the nephew of the honorable Secretary of the Provincial Council. For his part, Jack was grateful to be regarded no longer as a hostage under sentence of death. With Joe as an escort who knew the ropes, he went on deck and was promptly kicked off the p.o.o.p by the mate.

They first found food and quenched their raging thirst with water which had a loathsome smell. Joe reported to the chief gunner and begged the chance to sleep for a dozen hours on end. This was granted amiably enough and the pirates cl.u.s.tered about to ask all manner of curious questions, but the weary lads dragged themselves into the bows of the ship and curled up in a stupor. There they lay as if drugged, all through the night, even when the seamen trampled over them to haul the head-sails and tack ship.

When, at last, they blinked at the morning sky, it dismayed them to find the breeze blowing strong out of the southeast and the _Revenge_ standing in to the coast under easy sail. They looked aft and saw Blackbeard at the rail with a long gla.s.s at his eye. The whole crew was eager with expectation and the routine work went undone. The ship had been put about several hours earlier, Joe learned, and was due soon to sight the sh.o.r.e unless the reckoning was all at fault.

So cleverly had Blackbeard calculated the drift of the boys' raft that a little later in the morning a lookout in the maintop called down:

"Land, ho! Two points off the starboard bow she bears."

"The maintop, ahoy!" shouted Blackbeard. "Can ye see a vessel's spars?"

"'Tis too hazy insh.o.r.e. But unless my eyes play me tricks, a smudge of smoke arises."

Jack c.o.c.krell nervously confided to Joe:

"That would be Captain Wellsby's campfire on the beach."

"Trust him to douse it," was the easy a.s.surance. "I feel better. Blow me, but I expect to live another day."

"Answer me why," begged Jack. "I am like a palsied old man."

"Well, you know this bit o' coast, how low it sets above the sea.

Despite the haze, a man aloft could see a ship's masts and yards before he had a glimpse of land."

"Then the wreck of the _Plymouth Adventure_ has slid off the shoal and gone down, Joe?"

"Yes, when the wind veered and stirred a surf on the shoal. She pounded over with the flood-tide and dropped into fifteen fathom."

"Then we are saved, for now?" joyfully exclaimed Jack.

"Unless we're unlucky enough to find some o' those plaguey pirates afloat on a raft or makin' signals from the beach."

The _Revenge_ sailed sh.o.r.eward until those on board could discern the marching lines of breakers which tumbled across the shoal. The smudge of smoke had vanished from the beach. The lookout man concluded that the haze had deceived him. Blackbeard steered as close as he dared go, with a sailor heaving the lead, but there was no sign of life among the sand-dunes and the stunted trees. 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 c.o.c.krell the gift of life had been miraculously vouchsafed him and he felt secure for the moment. Joe's theory seemed plausible, that the pirates had abandoned the _Plymouth Adventure_ in time to avert drowning with her, and were driven away from the bight and the beach by Captain Wellsby's well-armed sailors.

"Do they know Blackbeard's rendezvous in the North Carolina waters, Joe?" was the natural query. "Are they likely to make their way thither, knowing that honest men will slay them at sight?"

"The swamps and the murderous Indians will take full toll of 'em, Jack.

I believe we have seen the last of those rogues, but I'd rest better could I know for certain."

"Meanwhile this mad Blackbeard may be taken in one of his savage frenzies and shoot me for sport," said young Master c.o.c.krell, for whom existence had come to be one hazard after another.

"He seems strangely tame, much like a human soul," observed Joe. "I ne'er beheld him like this. He plots some huge mischief, methinks."