"'Twas more like turtles all a-sleepin' in the sand," the old man croaked in rusty accents. "A few was sharp awake and they fought pretty whilst the rest rallied, but they got drove with their backs to the swamp and a deep slough. Then the sloop turned her guns on 'em and they struck their colors."

"And Joe Hawkridge sided with his friends, of course," said Jack.

"Would ye expect aught else of him?" proudly answered Bill Saxby. "He searched us out where we lay trussed like fowls, all bound with ropes.

We blundered fair into the camp last night, and old Trimble Rogers here, his legs knotted with cramps, couldn't make a run for it. They saved us for Blackbeard's pleasure but he had other fish to fry."

"What then?" demanded Jack.

"'Twas Joe Hawkridge that ran to cut our bonds when the fight began. And he bade us leg it for the pirogue and carry word to you. A pledge of honor, he called it, to stand by his dear friend Jack, and he made us swear it."

"Bless him for a Christian knight of a pirate," said Jack, with tears in his eyes. "Was he hurt, did ye happen to note?"

"We hid ourselves till the prisoners were flung into the boats. I marked Joe as one of 'em, and he was sprightly, barring a b.l.o.o.d.y face."

"Marooned, Bill Saxby?" asked Jack. "What's your judgment on that score? It cannot be many leagues from here, or the ship would have transported them instead of the boats."

"These barren islands lie strung well out from the coast, Master c.o.c.krell. Waterless they be, and without shelter. Blackbeard's fancy is to let the men die there----"

"An ancient custom of buccaneers and pirates," put in old Trimble Rogers, with an air of grave authority. "I mind me in the year of 1687 when I sailed in the South Sea with that great captain, Edward Davis,--'twas after the sack of Guayaquil when every man had a greater weight of gold and silver than he could lug on his back----"

Bill Saxby interrupted, in a petulant manner:

"Stow it, grandsire! At a better time ye can please the lad with your long-winded yarns,--of marching on Panama with Henry Morgan when the mother's milk was scarce dry on your lips."

"I cruised with the best of 'em," boasted the last of the storied race of true buccaneers of the Spanish Main, "and now I be in this cheap trade of piratin'. The fortunes I gamed away, and the plate ships I boarded! Take warnin', boy, and salt your treasure down."

"This Trimble Rogers will talk you deaf," said Bill Saxby, "but there's pith in his old bones and wisdom under yon h.o.a.ry thatch. Cap'n Bonnet sent him along with me as a rare old hound to trail the swamps."

In a vivid flash of remembrance, Jack c.o.c.krell saw this salty relic of the Spanish Main among the crew which had disported itself on the tavern green at Charles Town,--the old man sitting aside with a couple of stray children upon his knees while his head nodded to the lilt of the fiddle.

And again there had been a glimpse of him trudging in the column which had followed Stede Bonnet, with trumpet and drum, to attack the hostile Indians. Jack's heart warmed to Trimble Rogers and also to young Bill Saxby. They would find some way out of all this tribulation.

"Whither lies Captain Bonnet's stout ship?" eagerly demanded Jack.

"On this side the Western Ocean," smiled Saxby. "We shall waste no time in finding her. We had better bide where we are a few hours, eh, Trimble?"

"Aye, and double back up the stream in the canoe to spend the night on dry land and push on afoot at dawn. If we wait to sight Blackbeard's boats come in from sea, 'twill aid us to reckon how far out they went and what the bearings are."

"So Captain Bonnet may sail to pick off those poor seamen marooned,"

exclaimed Jack.

"He is not apt to leave 'em to bleach their bones," said Bill Saxby.

"And when it comes to closing in with Blackbeard, they will have a grudge of their own."

They made themselves as comfortable as possible on the bottom of the pirogue. Now and then Jack climbed the live-oak to look for the return of the boats. There was no more leisure for the pirates left in the ship and the sloop. Evidently Blackbeard had been alarmed by the tidings that two of Stede Bonnet's men had been caught spying him out and had made their escape in the confusion. The sloop was now listed over in shoal water and Bill Saxby ventured the opinion that they intended to take the mast out of her and put it in the _Revenge_.

"Along with most of her guns, I take it," said Trimble Rogers. "What with losing all those men, in one way or another, this Blackbeard, as Cap'n Ed'ard Teach miscalls hisself, must needs abandon the sloop. The more the merrier, says I, when we come at close quarters."

Jack asked many curious questions, by way of pa.s.sing the time. The old man was easy to read. He had been a lawless sea rover in the days when there was both gold and glory in harrying Spanish towns and galleons, from Mexico to Peru. The real buccaneers had vanished but he was too old a dog to learn new tricks and he faithfully served Stede Bonnet, who had a spark of the chivalry and manliness which had burned so brightly in that idolized master, Captain Edward Davis.

As for this blue-eyed smiling young Bill Saxby, he had been a small tradesman in London. Through no fault of his own, he was cruelly imprisoned for debt and, after two years, shipped to the Carolina plantations as no better than a slave. For all he knew, the girl wife and child in London had been suffered to starve. He had never heard any word of them. As a fugitive he had been taken aboard a pirate vessel.

There he found kindlier treatment than honest men had ever offered him, and so grew somewhat reconciled to this wicked calling.

On one of the occasions when Jack left these entertaining companions to visit his high sentry post in the tree, he surmised that all hands had been summoned on the vessel and lifting out her mast. He could see two boats plying back and forth and filled with men. He lingered because something else caught his interest. A little boat was putting out from the seaward side of the _Revenge_ and it fetched a wide circuit of the harbor. This brought the ship between it and the sloop so that its departure would be un.o.bserved by the toiling crew.

Two men were at the oars and a third sat in the stern. At a distance, Jack guessed they were bound to one of the nearest islands, perhaps in search of oysters or crabs, but after making a long sweep which carried the boat out of vision of the sloop and the beach, it swung toward the sh.o.r.e, a little to the northward of the mouth of the creek. The errand had a stealthy air. Jack c.o.c.krell started and almost fell out of the tree. He had been mistaken in his fancy that Blackbeard was in the pinnace which had towed the prisoners out to be marooned. This was none other than the grotesque fiend of a pirate himself, furtively steering his c.o.c.k-boat on some private errand of his own.

As soon as he was certain of this, Jack fairly scurried down the tree, digging his toes in the bark like a squirrel, and tumbling head over heels into the pirogue. Breathing rapidly, he stuttered:

"The--the devil himself,--in that little w-wherry of his,--c-coming insh.o.r.e. He must ha' seen the canoe. He is in chase of me."

"Go take a look, Bill," coolly remarked old Trimble Rogers, who was busy slapping at mosquitoes. "A touch o' the sun has bred a nightmare in the lad."

Bill Saxby swarmed up the live-oak like a limber seaman with fish-hooks for fingers and he, too, almost lost his balance at what he saw. He waved a warning hand at the canoe and then put his fingers to his lips.

Down he came in breakneck haste and urged the others to haul their craft farther up into the sedge. He was plucking green bushes and armfuls of dried gra.s.s to fling across the gunwales.

Satisfied that the canoe was entirely concealed, they crouched low. The old man was more concerned with the pest of insects and he reached out to claw up the sticky mud with which he plastered his face and neck like a mask. This seemed to give him some relief and his comrades were glad to do the same. Bill Saxby was attentive to the priming of the musket, which he pa.s.sed over to Trimble Rogers, saying:

"You are the chief gunner, old hawk. But hold your fire. I'm itching to know what trick this Don Whiskerando is up to."

"Fair enough," muttered the old man. "Cap'n Bonnet 'ud clap me in irons if I slew this filthy Ed'ard Teach and robbed him of that enjoyment.

I'll pull no trigger save in our own defense."

They heard the faint splash of oars. Soon the little c.o.c.k-boat came gliding around the bend of the sh.o.r.e and floated into the mouth of the creek. Bill Saxby raised himself for a moment and ducked swiftly as he whispered:

"He is not lookin' about but motions 'em to row on up the stream."

"Then our canoe is not what he's after?" murmured Jack.

"'Tis some queer game. Were he hunting us, he'd fetch along more hands than them two. Hush! Let him pa.s.s."

The little boat came steadily on, the tide helping the oars. It sat very low in the water, oddly so for the weight of three men. Blackbeard, hunched in the stern, held a pistol in one hand while the other gripped the tiller. This was not in fear of danger from the sh.o.r.e because he kept his eyes on the two seamen at the oars and it was plain to see that the pistol was meant to menace them.

The boat pa.s.sed abreast of the pirogue so artfully concealed in the pocket of a tiny cove. The intervening distance was no more than a dozen yards. Old Trimble Rogers wistfully fingered the musket and lifted it to squint along the barrel. Never was temptation more st.u.r.dily resisted.

Then his face, hard as iron and puckered like dried leather, broke into a smile. The idea pleased him immensely. They would follow Blackbeard and watch the chance to take him alive. He who had trapped his own men in camp was now neatly trapped himself, his retreat cut off. Tie a couple of fathom of stout cord to his whiskers and tow him along by land, all the way to Stede Bonnet's ship. There the worthy captain could bargain with him at his own terms, silently chuckled the old buccaneer.

They held their breath and gazed at the fantastic scoundrel who had made himself the ogre among pirates. He had discarded the great hat as c.u.mbersome and his tousled head was bound around with a wide strip of the red calico from India. Still and solid he sat, like a heathen idol, staring in front of him and intent on his mysterious errand. The unseen spectators in the pirogue scanned also the two seamen at the oars and felt a vague pity for them. Unmistakably they were sick with fear. It was conveyed by their dejected aspect, by the tinge of pallor, by the fixity with which they regarded the c.o.c.ked pistol in Blackbeard's fist.

Jack c.o.c.krell knew them as abandoned villains who had boasted of many a b.l.o.o.d.y deed but the swarthy, pockmarked fellow had been in the boat which had saved the two lads from the drifting raft. This was enough to awaken a lively sympathy.

Trimble Rogers gripped Jack's shoulder with a strength which made him wince and pointed a skinny finger at the boat. The fate of the two seamen did not trouble him greatly. Those who lived by violence should rightly expect to die by it. The sea was their gaming table and it was their ill luck if the dice were cogged. Just then Bill Saxby stifled an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. He, too, had discovered the freightage in the c.o.c.k-boat, the heavy burden which made it swim so low.

It rested in front of Blackbeard's knees, the top showing above the curve of the gunwales. It was a sea-chest, uncommonly large, built of some dark tropical wood and strapped with iron. Old Trimble Rogers'

fierce eyes glittered and he licked his lips. He leaned over to whisper in Bill Saxby's ear the one word:

"_Treasure!_"