"Unless an Indian drive an arrow through the lad's brisket, Bill, I can trust him to find our ship. Best give him the musket."

"Me shoulder that carronade and trudge a dozen leagues?" objected Jack.

"I travel light and leave the ordnance with you."

They insisted on his taking more than a third of the food but he refused to deprive them of the water jug. There would be streams enough to slake his thirst. It was an affectionate parting. Bill Saxby's innocent blue eyes were suffused and his chubby face sorrowful at the thought that they might not meet again. Trimble Rogers fished out his battered little Bible and quoted a few verses, as appeared to be his habit on all solemn occasions. Jack c.o.c.krell knew him well enough by now to find it not incongruous. Among this vanishing race of sea fighters had been many a hero of the most fervent piety. Their spirit was akin to that of Francis Drake who summoned his crew to prayers before he cleared for action.

And in this wise did Master Jack c.o.c.krell set out to bear a message from comrades in dire distress. Moreover, in his hands were the lives of Joe Hawkridge and those other marooned seamen, as he had every reason to believe. It was a grave responsibility to be thrust upon a raw lad in his teens who had been so carefully nurtured by his fretful guardian of an uncle, Mr. Peter Arbuthnot Forbes. Jack thought of this and said to himself, with a smile:

"A few weeks gone, and I was locked in my room without any dinner for loitering with Stede Bonnet's pirates at the Charles Town tavern. My education has been swift since then."

He was expectant of meeting no end of peril and hardship and he fought down a sense of dread that was not to his discredit. But it was so decreed that he should pa.s.s secure and unmolested. At first he went too fast, without husbanding his strength, and loped along like a hound whenever the country was clear of brushwood. This wore him down and he failed to watch carefully enough for his landmarks. Toward the end of the day he became confused because he could not discern the sea even by climbing a tree. But he tried to keep bearing to the northeast until the sun went down. Afraid of losing himself entirely and ignorant of the lay of the land by night, he made his bivouac in a grove of sycamore saplings and imagined Indians were creeping up whenever the leaves rustled.

This fear of roaming savages troubled him next day as he wearily trudged through this primeval wilderness unknown to white settlers. It spurred him on despite his foot-sore fatigue and he was making the journey more rapidly than old Trimble Rogers, for all his cunning woodcraft, had been able to accomplish it. Almost at the end of his endurance, the plucky lad discerned the sheen of a broad water in the twilight and so came to the Cape Fear River.

He had worried greatly lest he might have veered too far inland but there was the wooded bay and the fore-land crowned with dead pines which had been swept by forest fire. And out beyond it was the island, of the size and shape described by Trimble Rogers, making a harbor from the sea which rolled to the horizon rim.

But no tall brig, nor any other vessel rode at anchor in this silent and lonely haven. Jack had been told precisely where to look for it. He had made no mistake. Some emergency had caused Captain Stede Bonnet to make sail and away.

A king's ship or some other hostile force might have compelled him to slip his cable in haste, reflected Jack as he descended to the sh.o.r.e of the bay. It was most unlike the chivalrous Stede Bonnet to abandon two of his faithful seamen without an effort to succor them. Endeavoring to comfort himself with this surmise, the sorely disappointed boy paced the sand far into the night and gazed in vain for the glimmer of a fire or the spark of a signal lantern in a ship's rigging. He could not bear to think of the dark prospect should no help betide him.

Some time before day he was between waking and sleeping when a queer delusion distracted him. Humming in his ears was the refrain of a song which was both familiar and hauntingly pleasant. It seemed to charm away his poignant anxieties, to lull him with a feeling of safety. He wondered if his troublesome adventures had made him light-headed. He moved not a muscle but listened to this phantom music and noted that it sounded louder and clearer instead of fading away. And still he refused to believe that it was anything more than a drowsy mockery.

At length a vagrant breeze brought him a s.n.a.t.c.h of this enjoyable chorus in deeper, stronger volume and he leaped to his feet with a shout. It was no hallucination. l.u.s.ty seamen were singing in time to the beat of their oars, and Jack c.o.c.krell knew it for the favorite song of Stede Bonnet's crew. He could distinguish the words as they rolled them out in buoyant, stentorian harmony:

"An' when my precious leg was lopt, Just for a bit of fun I picks it up, on t'other hopt, An' rammed it in a gun.

'What's that for?' cries out Ginger d.i.c.k, 'What for? my jumpin' beau?

Why, to give the lubbers one more kick,'

_Yo, ho, with the rum below!_"

CHAPTER XII

A PRIVATE ACCOUNT TO SETTLE

THE ship's boat was bound into the bay, probably to lie there for daybreak, and Jack c.o.c.krell rushed down to the beach where he set up such a frantic hullabaloo that the sailors ceased singing and held their breath and their oars suspended. They had come to look for Bill Saxby and Trimble Rogers, but this was a strange voice. It was so odd a circ.u.mstance that several of them hailed the sh.o.r.e with questions loud and perplexed.

"Master John c.o.c.krell, at your service," came back the reply. "Captain Bonnet knows me. I am the lad that clouted a six-foot pirate of yours for being saucy to a maid in Charles Town."

This aroused a roar of laughter and there were gusty shouts of:

"Here's that same Will Brant in the boat with us. He shakes in his boots at the sound of ye."

"What's the game, lad? Have ye taken a ship of your own to scour the Main?"

Jack ignored this good-natured badinage and, in dignified accents, told them to come ash.o.r.e and take him off to the _Royal James_. 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. This aroused their sympathy before he told them of his escape from the _Revenge_ and his adventures with Bill Saxby and the crippled buccaneer. In their turn they explained how Captain Bonnet had sent them down the river to await the return of the two men who were now stranded in the wilderness two days' march distant.

"And why did your captain shift the brig from her anchorage off the island?" asked Jack.

This amused the boat's crew who nudged each other and were evasive until the master's mate who was in charge went far enough to say:

"A sloop came in from the Pamlico River. Our ship sought a snugger harbor, d'ye see? There was some private business. We loaded the sloop with hogshead of sugar, and bolts of damask, and silver ingots. His Excellency, Governor Eden, of the North Carolina Province, turns an honest penny now and then."

"The Governor of this Province is a partner in piracy?" cried Jack.

"Brawl it not so loud, nor spill it to Cap'n Bonnet," cautioned the master's mate. "I confide this much to stave off your foolish questions when ye board the ship."

There was no reason to tarry in the bay and the boat pulled out to follow the course of the river and return in haste to the brig _Royal James_ in her more secluded harbor. The news that Blackbeard was at his old rendezvous within easy sail to the southward eclipsed all other topics. And when it was learned that he had lost the two sloops of his squadron, there was fierce delight. Although the _Revenge_ was a larger vessel and more heavily manned and gunned, they were hilariously confident of victory. It was a burning grudge and a private quarrel, and fuel was added to the flame by the tidings that a score or more of seamen had been mercilessly marooned to perish because of their suspected preference for Captain Stede Bonnet.

When Jack c.o.c.krell caught sight of the shapely brig as she loomed in the morning haze, it seemed as though years had pa.s.sed since he had enviously watched her pa.s.s out over the Charles Town bar. Presently he spied the soldierly captain on the quarter-deck, his spare figure all taut and erect, his chin clean-shaven, his queue powdered, his apparel fresh and in good taste. A ship is like her master and the watch was sluicing down decks or setting up the rigging which had slackened with the heavy dew. Jack felt ashamed to let himself be seen. This was no place for a ragam.u.f.fin.

Captain Bonnet strode to the gangway and stared down at this bit of human flotsam. He was quick to recognize his boyish friend and admirer and ordered the men to lower a boatswain's chair and lift Master c.o.c.krell aboard. Jack was, indeed, so stiffened and sore and weary that he had been wondering how he could climb the side of a ship.

"Tut, tut, my son, bide your time," exclaimed Stede Bonnet as they met on deck. "Tell it later. The master's mate will enlighten me."

He led the way into the cabin which was in order and simply furnished.

One servant brewed fragrant coffee from Arabia while another made a room ready for the guest and fetched clean clothing from the captain's chests and a tub of hot water. And as soon as the grateful Master c.o.c.krell had made himself presentable, he was invited to sit down at table with the captain and enjoy a meal of porridge and crisp English bacon and fresh eggs from the ship's hen-coop in the long-boat and hot crumpets and marmalade. And this after the pinched ration of mouldy salt-horse and wormy hard-bread! Captain Bonnet lighted a roll of tobacco leaves, which he called a _cigarro_, and puffed clouds of smoke while Master c.o.c.krell cleaned every dish and lamented that his skin felt too tight to begin all over again.

He was now in a mood to relate his strange yarn, from its outset in the ill-fated merchant trader, _Plymouth Adventure_. Eagerly he begged information concerning her people after their shipwreck, but Captain Bonnet had been cruising far offsh.o.r.e to intercept a convoy of rich West Indiamen from Jamaica for the old country.

"I will make it my duty to set you ash.o.r.e at Charles Town, Master Jack,"

said he, "and I pray you may find your good uncle alive and still vowing to hang all rogues of pirates."

"But I must sail with you, sir, till you have saved Joe Hawkridge and his shipmates and blown Blackbeard out of water."

"Rest easy on that," exclaimed Stede Bonnet. "Those affairs are most urgent. My ship will drop down the river to-day, with the turn o' the tide, and heave to long enough to land a party, six men, to go in search of Trimble Rogers who is the apple of my eye. I shall not ask you to join them, but you can give directions and pen a fair map, I trow."

"Gladly would I go," replied Jack, "but my poor legs wobble like your valiant old buccaneer's. And my feet are raw."

"You have proved yourself," was the fine compliment. "I judged ye aright when we first met."

Soon the deck above them resounded to the tramp of boots and the thump of sheet-blocks as the brisk seamen made ready to cast the ship free.

She was in competent hands and so Stede Bonnet lingered below to enjoy talking with the youth whose manners and breeding were like his own. In a mood unusually confidential he confirmed Jack's earlier impressions, that he was a pirate with a certain code of honor which reminded one of Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest who robbed the rich and befriended the poor. Touching on his mortal quarrel with Blackbeard, he revealed how that traitorous ruffian had proposed a partnership while he, Stede Bonnet, was a novice at the trade. The plot all hatched to take Bonnet's fine ship, the _Revenge_, from him, Blackbeard had disclosed his hand at the final conference when he said, with a sarcastic grimace:

"I see, my good sir, that you are not used to the cares and duties of commanding a vessel, so I will relieve you of 'em."

As soon as Captain Bonnet had mended his fortunes and had the goodly brig _Royal James_ to cruise in, his ruling purpose was to regain the _Revenge_ from Blackbeard and at the same time wreak a proper punishment.

"So now if we can trap this black-hearted Teach before he flits to sea,"

said Stede Bonnet, "you will see a pretty engagement, Master c.o.c.krell.

But first we must find the score o' men that he marooned. It will be a deed of mercy, besides affording me a stronger crew."

The brig was soon standing down the river while the landing party broke out an ample store of provisions and powder and ball, with canvas for a tent. The plan was for them to pitch a camp near the sh.o.r.e of the bay to which they could fetch back Trimble Rogers and Bill Saxby and there wait for their ship to return and take them off. They were ready to go ash.o.r.e when Captain Bonnet's navigator ordered the main-topsail laid aback and the brig slowly swung into the wind. The delay was brief and no sooner was the boat cast off than the _Royal James_ proceeded on the voyage to Cherokee Inlet.

Clumsy as those sailing ships of two hundred years ago appear to modern eyes, their lines were finely moulded under water and with a favoring wind they could log a fair distance in a day's run. It goes without saying that this tall brig was shoved along for all she was worth before a humming breeze that made her creak, and during the night she was reckoned to be a few miles to seaward of the sandy islands which extended like a barrier outside of Cherokee Inlet. Jack c.o.c.krell stood a watch of his own, dead weary but with no thought of sleep until he could hear the lookout shout "Land ho!"