Blackbeard: Buccaneer Part 22

"Come, lads, we be all devils together, with a h.e.l.l of our own,--brimstone fires and pitch. Now, braggarts, see how long ye can bear it. 'Tis a foretaste of what's in store for all hands. At this game I'll outlast ye, for, harkee, I sold my soul to the Old Scratch as is well known."

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE LOOMED LIKE THE BELIAL WHOM HE WAS SO FOND OF CLAIMING AS HIS MENTOR]

He stirred his infernal pots and the greasy smoke rolled upward in choking volume. The brimstone fumes were so vile and noxious that the victims of this outlandish revel soon gasped and wheezed. But they dared not object nor move from their places among the villainous pots.

Blackbeard enjoyed their sufferings, taunting them as milksops and poltroons who could not endure even this taste of Gehenna. He himself appeared to be unaffected by it, lurching from one man to another, whacking them with the burning torch or playfully upsetting them. In the gaseous pall of smoke he loomed like the Belial whom he was so fond of claiming as his mentor.

Finally one of his involuntary guests toppled over in a faint.

Blackbeard was kind enough to haul him to the door and boot him through it. A second man dragged himself thither. A third found voice to supplicate. The witch-fires still smoked and stewed in the pots and Blackbeard had proved that he was the toughest demon of them all.

The two stowaways watched this demented exploit in sheer wonderment. The fumes were not dense in their part of the hold and they could breathe, but they well-nigh strangled in trying to refrain from coughing. The fires of tar and brimstone and what not cast so much light that they dared not betray themselves by crawling toward the forepeak. The upright beams between the keelson and the deck threw black shadows over them and they were in no great peril of detection so long as they stayed motionless.

Joe Hawkridge had heard gossip of this extraordinary amus.e.m.e.nt as a kind of initiation for hands newly joining Blackbeard's ship. He therefore read it that these unfortunates were some of Stede Bonnet's men who had been captured with the brig. They had been allowed to enlist and were being taught to respect their new master.

Jack c.o.c.krell had hugely admired young Joe for his ready wit and coolness in other crises of their mutual fortunes but now came a moment in which the astute sea urchin surpa.s.sed himself. It was not too much to say that he displayed absolute genius with the st.u.r.dy Master c.o.c.krell to aid and abet him. Joe clawed in the dark until he found the sack with a few pounds of wheat flour in it. A quick whisper and his comrade grasped the great idea. They took no thought of a sequel. They would trust to opportunity. Hastily they rubbed the flour into their shirts and breeches. They covered their faces with it and lavishly sprinkled their hair. They looked at each other in the shadow of the beams and were pleased with their handiwork.

Another whispered consultation and Joe possessed himself of the cannon-ball of a cheese while Jack grasped the side of salt-fish by the tail. They resembled two whitened clowns of a pantomime but in spirit they were as grimly serious as the menace of death could make them.

Blackbeard was dancing clumsily, like a drunken bear, and deriding with lewd oaths the two or three tortured survivors of his brimstone carnival. In a high, wailing voice which rose to a shriek there was borne to him the words:

"Ye dirked poor Jesse Strawn and left him rotting in the swamp. I was a true and faithful seaman, Cap'n Teach."

A deeper voice boomed out, filling the hold with unearthly echoes:

"I am the shade of the master mariner whom ye did foully murder off Matanzas and there is no rest for me ten fathom down."

The apparitions flitted out of the shadow and were vaguely disclosed in the flickering glare from the brimstone pots. The smoke gave them a wavering aspect as though their shapes were unsubstantial. Blackbeard stood beholding them in a trance of horror. With an aimless finger he traced the sign of the cross and his pallid lips moved in the murmur:

"_The ghost o' Jesse Strawn! For the love of G.o.d, forbear._"

It was a pet.i.tion as pious as ever Christian uttered. Forgotten was his wicked counterfeit of the nether region. Again the shrill voice wailed:

"Pity poor Jesse Strawn. I'll haunt ye by land and sea, Cap'n Teach.

Swear by the Book to let that treasure chest lie at the bottom of the creek else I tear your sinful soul from your body."

The terrible Blackbeard was incapable of motion. Huskily he muttered:

"I'll ne'er seek the chest, good Jesse Strawn, an' it please you to pa.s.s me by."

The two spectres moved forward as the one of the deeper voice declaimed:

"Doomed I was to find no rest till I overtook your ship, Ed'ard Teach.

Each night you'll see me walk the plank from your quarter-deck."

The unhappy Blackbeard gibbered something and would have fled as the spirits approached him. But those bandy legs tottered and before he could turn the awful visitants were upon him. One raised a round shot above his head, or so it appeared to be, and smote him full upon the crown. The other whirled a flat bludgeon and hit him on the jaw. With the smell of brimstone was mingled the pungent flavor of ripe cheese and salt-fish. Blackbeard measured his length, and the ghost of Jesse Strawn delayed an instant to dump a pot of sizzling combustibles over him.

Then the spirits twain made for the cabin at top speed. Several of the crew had rushed down to harken to the strange disturbance. They scattered wildly at the first glimpse of these phantoms, being superst.i.tious sailormen with many a wicked deed to answer for. It flashed into Joe Hawkridge's mind that all the men of the watch might be chased below, the hatches clapped on them, and the mastery of the brig secured. Blackbeard was absent for reasons best known to himself and his pirates lacked leadership. A brace of ghosts could put them to panic rout. And, no doubt, that wailing message of dead Jesse Strawn had carried like the cry of a banshee.

The p.o.o.p was deserted in the twinkling of an eye, even to the pair of helmsmen and the officer of the watch. Against the sky of night the unwelcome phantoms were wan and luminous while the groans which issued from them were enough to curdle the blood of the brawniest pirate. He who had been Jack c.o.c.krell in mortal guise was quick to slide the cabin hatch closed and fasten it. For the moment they had captured the armed brig _Royal James_ and as ferocious a crew of rascals as ever scuttled a merchantman.

Joe Hawkridge glided to the taffrail and peered over the stern. A boat was towing behind the ship. It had been left there for taking soundings or pulling the brig's head around while she was still in the shoaler waters near the coast. This was better than Joe had dared antic.i.p.ate.

Feeling his way along the rail, he found the end of the rope which was belayed around a wooden pin. Heaven be praised, they would not have to swim for it! He beckoned his comrade to say in his ear:

"They will soon find their wits. It 'ud be foolish to try scaring 'em under hatches now that the jolly-boat floats so handy. There's hard cases amongst 'em that will begin shooting at us presently. Down the rope ye go, Jack. I'll stand by and give 'em another dose of poor Jesse Strawn."

Over the rail flew the stouter phantom of the two and slid like a white streak, fetching up in the boat with a most earthly and substantial thump. With a farewell wail the other ghost flung a limber leg over and shot down so fast that his hands were scorched. To such pirates as beheld this instant vanishment, these disturbing spirits floated off into s.p.a.ce. Jack cut the rope with his knife and the boat dropped back in the shining wake. They shoved out two heavy oars and fairly broke their hearts in pulling dead into the wind where the brig would have to tack to pursue them.

The rattle of the oars and the discovery of the shorn rope's end must have convinced the pirates who ran aft that they had been tricked by mortal beings like themselves. A musket spat a red streak of fire.

Blocks whined as the braces were hauled to change the brig's course. In the light breeze she responded awkwardly and soon hung in stays.

Meanwhile the jolly-boat was slowly working to windward while two frightened lads tugged and swung until the flour turned to paste on their dripping faces.

Before the brig began to forge ahead, the boat was invisible from her decks. This was evident because the spatter of musket-fire ceased. Soon the fugitives heard Blackbeard's harsh voice d.a.m.ning all hands. That thick skull of his had not been cracked by the impact of the solid cheese and he had been released from his brimstone inferno. The ghosts rested on their oars. They could watch the glimmering canvas of the brig and see what her procedure might be. Soon she filled away and forsook the attempt to find the boat. Blackbeard had wisdom enough to avoid blundering about and putting the brig aground in a chase so elusive as this.

"Farewell, ye hairy son of Tophet," said Joe Hawkridge, waving his hand at the disappearing vessel. "And here's hoping I set your whiskers ablaze when I turned the pot over 'em."

"Did you hear him swear not to touch the treasure chest, Joe? That was a master stroke of yours."

"Aye, it was bright of me. But he thinks different now. He knows we made a b.o.o.by of him."

"But we learned one thing,--he hasn't recovered the treasure yet,"

suggested Jack.

"He is such a powerful liar that I don't know as the ghost o' Jesse Strawn could budge the truth out of him. However, it was comfortin' to hear him swear it on his marrow-bones. I fetched away the navigation chart, the one I poached from the cabin table. It gives us the lay o'

the coast."

"What ho and whither bound?" was Jack's question. "Here is a sail wound round a sprit beneath the thwarts."

"The wrong wind to head for Cap'n Bonnet and the _Revenge_. This swag-bellied jolly-boat handles like a firkin. We had best wait for day and then decide the voyage."

"Nothing to eat and no water, Joe. All I can find is an empty pannikin."

"You're a glutton," severely exclaimed young Hawkridge. "After the banquet I served in the hold!"

What Master c.o.c.krell said in reply sounds as familiar and as wistful to-day as when he spoke it two hundred years ago.

"I have had enough of wandering and strange adventures, Joe. I want to go home."

CHAPTER XV

MR. PETER FORBES MOURNS HIS NEPHEW

IT seems a long time, in the course of this story, since the honorable Secretary of the Council, Mr. Peter Arbuthnot Forbes, was forced to sail in to Charles Town from the _Plymouth Adventure_ on that most humiliating errand of finding medicines for Blackbeard's fever-smitten rogues. For the sake of his own dear nephew and the other hostages detained on board, he had endeavored to perform his bargain and was returning across the bar when the threatening clouds and other portents of a violent storm caused the seamen to lose heart. They put about and drove back into the harbor for shelter in the very nick of time.

These were pirates from Blackbeard's crew, it may be recalled, with his grizzled, scarred boatswain at the tiller. They had felt safe enough to swagger and ruffle it through the streets of Charles Town and to terrify the people. Their worthless lives were protected by the hostages who waited in fear and trembling. The town seethed with indignation and was hot with shame. There would be no more of the friendly traffic with pirates.

It was fully believed that the wretched Blackbeard would be as good as his word in allowing no more than two days' grace. Therefore when Mr.