Kate Bonnet Part 23

d.i.c.kory did not believe very much in the black-bearded pirate, with his wild tricks and inhuman high spirits, but Jamaica lay to the east, and he was going eastward.

Incited, perhaps, by the possession of a fine s.h.i.+p, manned by a crew picked from his old vessel and from the men who had formed the crew of the Revenge, Blackbeard was in better spirits than was his wont, and so far as his nature would allow he treated d.i.c.kory with fair good-humour.

But no matter what happened, his unrestrained imagination never failed him. Having taken the fancy to see d.i.c.kory always in full uniform, he allowed him to a.s.sume no other clothes; he was always in naval full-dress and c.o.c.ked hat, and his duties were those of a private secretary.

"The only shrewd thing I ever knew your Sir Nightcap to do," he said, "was to tell me you could not read nor write. He spoke so glibly that I believed him. Had it not been so I should have sent you to the town to help with the sh.o.r.e end of my affairs, and then you would have been there still and I should have had no admiral to write my log and straighten my accounts."

Sometimes, in his quieter moods, when there was no provocation to send pistol-b.a.l.l.s between two sailors quietly conversing, or to perform some other demoniac trick, Blackbeard would talk to d.i.c.kory and ask all manner of questions, some of which the young man answered, while some he tried not to answer. Thus it was that the pirate found out a great deal more about d.i.c.kory's life, hope, and sorrows than the young fellow imagined that he made known. He discovered that d.i.c.kory was greatly interested in Bonnet's daughter, and wished above all other things in this world to get to her and to be with her.

This was a little out of the common run of things among the brotherhood; it was their fas.h.i.+on to forget, so far as they were able, the family ties which already belonged to them, and to make no plans for any future ties of that sort which they might be able to make. Such a thing amused the generally rampant Blackbeard, but if this d.i.c.kory boy whom they had on board really did wish to marry some one, the idea came into the crafty mind of Blackbeard that he would like to attend to that marrying himself. It pleased him to have a finger in every pie, and now here was a pie in the fingering of which he might take a novel interest.

This renowned desperado, this b.l.o.o.d.y cutthroat, this merciless pirate possessed a home--a quiet little English home on the Cornwall coast, where the cheerful woods and fields stretched down almost in reach of the sullen sea. Here dwelt his wife, quiet Mistress Thatch, and here his brawny daughter. Seldom a word came to this rural home from the father, burning and robbing, sinking and slaying out upon the western seas. But from the stores of pelf which so often slipped so easily into his great arms, and which so often slipped just as easily out of them, came now and then something to help the brawn grow upon his daughter's bones and to ease the labours of his wife.

Eliza Thatch bore no resemblance to a houri; her hair was red, her face was freckled; she had enough teeth left to do good eating with when she had a chance, and her step shook the timbers of her little home.

Her father had heard from her a little while ago by a letter she had had conveyed to Belize. His parental feelings, notwithstanding he had told Bonnet he knew no such sentiments, were stirred. When he had finished her letter he would have been well pleased to burn a vessel and make a dozen pa.s.sengers walk the plank as a memorial to his girl. But this not being convenient, it had come to him that he would marry the wench to the gaily bedecked young fellow he had captured, and it filled his reckless heart with a wild delight. He drew his cutla.s.s, and with a great oath he drove the heavy blade into the top of the table, and he swore by this mark that his grand plan should be carried out.

He would sail over to England; this would be a happy chance, for his vessel was unladen and ready for any adventure. He would drop anchor in the quiet cove he knew of; he would go ash.o.r.e by night; he would be at home again. To be at home again made him shout with profane laughter, the little home he remembered would be so ridiculous to him now. He would see again his poor little trembling wife--she must be gray by now--and he was sure that she would tremble more than ever she did when she heard the great sea oaths which he was accustomed to pour forth now.

And his daughter, she must be a strapping wench by this time; he was sure she could stand a slap on the back which would kill her mother.

Yes, there should be a wedding, a fine wedding, and good old rum should water the earth. And he would detail a boat's crew of jolly good fellows from the Revenge to help make things uproarious. This Charter boy and Eliza should have a house of their own, with plenty of money--he had more funds in hand than ever in his life before--and his respectable son-in-law should go to London and deposit his fortune in a bank. It would be royal fun to think of him and Eliza highly respectable and with money in the bank. A quart of the best rum could scarcely have made Blackbeard more hilarious than did this glorious notion. He danced among his crew; he singed beards; he whacked with capstan bars; he pushed men down hatchways; he was in lordly spirits, and his crew expected some great adventure, some startling piece of deviltry.

Of course he did not keep his great design from d.i.c.kory--it was too glorious, too transcendent. He took his young admiral into his cabin and laid before him his dazzling future.

d.i.c.kory sat speechless, almost breathless. As he listened he could feel himself turn cold. Had any one else been talking to him in this strain he would have shouted with laughter, but people did not laugh at Blackbeard.

When the pirate had said all and was gazing triumphantly at poor d.i.c.kory, the young man gasped a word in answer; he could not accept this awful fate without as much as a wave of the hand in protest.

"But, sir," said he, "if--"

Blackbeard's face grew black; he bent his head and lowered upon the pale d.i.c.kory, then, with a tremendous blow, he brought down his fist upon the table.

"If Eliza will not have you," he roared; "if that girl will not take you when I offer you to her; if she or her mother as much as winks an eyelash in disobedience of my commands, I will take them by the hair of their heads and I will throw them into the sea. If she will not have you," he repeated, roaring as if he were shouting through a speaking trumpet in a storm, "if I thought that, youngster, I would burn the house with both of them in it, and the rum I had bought to make a jolly wedding should be poured on the timbers to make them blaze. Let no notions like that enter your mind, my boy. If she disobeys me, I will cook her and you shall eat her. Disobey me!" And he swore at such a rate that he panted for fresh air and mounted to the deck.

It was not a time for d.i.c.kory to make remarks indicating his disapproval of the proposed arrangement.

As the Revenge sailed on over sunny seas or under lowering clouds, d.i.c.kory was no stranger to the binnacle, and the compa.s.s always told him that they were sailing eastward. He had once asked Blackbeard where they now were by the chart, but that gracious gentleman of the midnight beard had given him oaths for answers, and had told him that if the captain knew where the s.h.i.+p was on any particular hour or minute n.o.body else on that s.h.i.+p need trouble his head about it. But at last the course of the Revenge was changed a little, and she sailed northward. Then d.i.c.kory spoke with one of the mildest of the mates upon the subject of their progress, and the man made known to him that they were now about half-way through the Windward pa.s.sage. d.i.c.kory started back. He knew something of the geography of those seas.

"Why, then," he cried, "we have pa.s.sed Jamaica!"

"Of course we have," said the man, and if it had not been for d.i.c.kory's uniform he would have sworn at him.

CHAPTER XXII

BLADE TO BLADE

When the corvette Badger sailed from Jamaica she moved among the islands of the Caribbean Sea as if she had been a modern vessel propelled by a steam-engine. That which represented a steam-engine in this case was the fiery brain of Captain Christopher Vince of his Majesty's navy. More than winds, more than currents, this brain made its power felt upon the course and progress of the vessel.

Calling at every port where information might possibly be gained, hailing every sloop or s.h.i.+p or fis.h.i.+ng-smack which might have sighted the pirate s.h.i.+p Revenge, with a constant lookout for a black flag, Captain Vince kept his engine steadily at work.

But it was not in pursuit of a s.h.i.+p that the swift keel of the Badger cut through the sea, this way and that, now on a long course, now doubling back again, like a hound fancying he has got the scent of a hare, then raging wildly when he finds the scent is false; it was in pursuit of a woman that every sail was spread, that the lookout swept the sea, and that the hot brain of the captain worked steadily and hard.

This English man-of-war was on a cruise to make Kate Bonnet the bride of its captain. The heart of this naval lover was very steady; it was fixed in its purpose, nothing could turn it aside. Vince's plans were well-digested; he knew what he wanted to do, he knew how he was going to do it.

In the first place he would capture the man Bonnet; all the details of the action were arranged to that end; then, with Kate's father as his prisoner, he would be master of the situation.

There was nothing n.o.ble about this craftily elaborated design; but, then, there was nothing n.o.ble about Captain Vince. He was a strong hater and a strong lover, and whether he hated or loved, nothing, good or bad, must stand in his way. With the life or death, the misery or the happiness of the father in his hands, he knew that he need but beckon to the daughter. She might come slowly, but she would come. She was a grand woman, but she was a woman; she might resist the warm plea of love, but she could not resist the cold commands of that cruel figure of death who stood behind the lover.

Captain Bonnet was returning from his visit to the New England coast, picking up bits of profit here and there as fortune befell him, when Captain Vince first heard that the Revenge had gone northward. The news was circ.u.mstantial and straightforward, and was not to be doubted. Vince raged upon his quarter-deck when he found out how he had been wasting time. Northward now was pointed the bow of the Badger, and the vengeful Vince felt as if his prey was already in his hands. If Bonnet had sailed up the Atlantic coast he was bound to sail down again. It might be a long cruise, there might be impatient waitings at the mouths of coves and rivers where the pirates were accustomed to take refuge or refit, but the light of the eyes of Kate Bonnet were worth the longest pursuit or the most impatient waiting.

So, steadily sailed the corvette Badger up the long Atlantic coast, and she pa.s.sed the capes of the Delaware while Captain Bonnet was examining the queer pulpit in the little bay-side town where his s.h.i.+p had stopped to take in water.

At the various ports of the northern coast where the Revenge had sailed back and forth outside, the Badger boldly entered, and the tales she heard soon turned her back again to sail southward down the long Atlantic coast. But the heart of Christopher Vince never failed. The vision of Kate Bonnet as he had seen her, standing with glorious eyes denouncing him; as he should see her when, with bowed head and proffered hand, she came to him; as all should see her when, in her clear-cut beauty, she stood beside him in his ancestral home, never left him.

Off the port of Charles Town, South Carolina, the Badger lay and waited, and soon, from an outgoing bark, the news came to Captain Vince that several weeks before the pirate Bonnet of the Revenge had taken an English s.h.i.+p as she was entering port, and had then sailed southward.

Southward now sailed the Badger, and, as there was but little wind, Captain Vince swore with an unremitting diligence.

It was a quiet morning and the Badger was nearing the straits of Florida when a sail was reported almost due south.

Up came Captain Vince with his gla.s.s, and after a long, long look, and another, and another, during which the two vessels came slowly nearer and nearer each other, the captain turned to his first officer and said quietly: "She flies the skull and bones. She's the first of those h.e.l.lish pirates that we have yet met on this most unlucky cruise."

"If we could send her, with her crew on board, ten times to the bottom,"

said the other, "she would not pay us what her vile fraternity has cost us. But these pirate craft know well the difference between a Spanish galleon and a British man-of-war, and they will always give us a wide berth."

"But this one will not," said the captain.

Then again he looked long and earnestly through his gla.s.s. "Send aft the three men who know the Revenge," said he.

Presently the men came aft, and one by one they went aloft, and soon came the report, vouched for by each of them:

"The sail ahead is the pirate Revenge."

Now all redness left the face of Captain Vince. He was as pale as if he had been afraid that the pirate s.h.i.+p would capture him, but every man on his vessel knew that there was no fear in the soul or the body of the captain of the Badger. Quickly came his orders, clear and sharp; everything had been gone over before, but everything was gone over again. The corvette was to bear down upon the pirate, her cannon--great guns for those days, and which could soon have disabled, if they had not sunk, the smaller vessel--were muzzled and told to hold their peace. The man-of-war was to bear down upon the pirate and to capture her by boarding. There was to be no broadside, no timber-splitting cannon b.a.l.l.s.

The wind was light and in favour of the corvette, and slowly the two vessels diminished the few miles between them; but there was enough wind to show the royal colours on the Badger.

"He is a bold fellow, that pirate," said some of the naval men, "and he will wait and fight us."

"He will wait and fight us," said some of the others, "because he cannot get away; in this wind he is at our mercy."

Captain Vince stood and gazed over the water, sometimes with his gla.s.s and sometimes without it. Here now was the end of his fuming, his raging, his long and untiring search. All the anxious weariness of long voyaging, all the impatience of watching, all the irritation of waiting had gone. The notorious vessel in which the father of Kate Bonnet had made himself a terror and a scourge was now almost within his reach. The beneficent vessel by which the father of Kate Bonnet should give to him his life's desire was so near to him that he could have sent a musket ball into her had he chosen to fire. It was so near to him that he could now, with his gla.s.s, read the word "Revenge" on her bow. His brows were knit, his jaws were set tight, his muscles hardened themselves with energy.

Again the orders were pa.s.sed, that when the men of the corvette boarded the pirate they were to cut down the rascals without mercy, and not one of them was to draw sword or pistol against the pirate captain. He would be attended to by their commander.

Vince knew the story of Stede Bonnet; he knew that early in life he had been in the army, and that it was likely that he understood the handling of a sword. But he knew also that he himself was one of the best swordsmen in the royal navy. He yearned to cross blades with the man whose blood should not be shed, whose life should be preserved throughout the combat as if he were a friend and not a foe, who should surrender to him his sword and give to him his daughter.