Blackbeard: Buccaneer

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

  CHAPTER VII

  THE MIST OF THE CHEROKEE SWAMP

  THE dark cloud of anxiety was lightened a trifle by the fact thatBlackbeard displayed no ill temper toward the two young castaways.Having obtained such information as they chose to offer, he roughly toldthem to go forward and join the crew. Whether or no, Jack was impressedas a pirate and it may have amused Blackbeard to recruit by force thenephew of the honorable Secretary of the Provincial Council. For hispart, Jack was grateful to be regarded no longer as a hostage undersentence of death. With Joe as an escort who knew the ropes, he went ondeck and was promptly kicked off the poop by the mate.

  They first found food and quenched their raging thirst with water whichhad a loathsome smell. Joe reported to the chief gunner and begged thechance to sleep for a dozen hours on end. This was granted amiablyenough and the pirates clustered about to ask all manner of curiousquestions, but the weary lads dragged themselves into the bows of theship and curled up in a stupor. There they lay as if drugged, allthrough the night, even when the seamen trampled over them to haul thehead-sails and tack ship.

  When, at last, they blinked at the morning sky, it dismayed them to findthe breeze blowing strong out of the southeast and the _Revenge_standing in to the coast under easy sail. They looked aft and sawBlackbeard at the rail with a long glass at his eye. The whole crew waseager with expectation and the routine work went undone. The ship hadbeen put about several hours earlier, Joe learned, and was due soon tosight the shore unless the reckoning was all at fault.

  So cleverly had Blackbeard calculated the drift of the boys' raft that alittle 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 inshore. But unless my eyes play me tricks, a smudge ofsmoke arises."

  Jack Cockrell nervously confided to Joe:

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

  "Trust him to douse it," was the easy assurance. "I feel better. Blowme, 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 beforehe had a glimpse of land."

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

  "Yes, when the wind veered and stirred a surf on the shoal. She poundedover 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 piratesafloat on a raft or makin' signals from the beach."

  The _Revenge_ sailed shoreward until those on board could discern themarching lines of breakers which tumbled across the shoal. The smudge ofsmoke had vanished from the beach. The lookout man concluded that thehaze had deceived him. Blackbeard steered as close as he dared go, witha sailor heaving the lead, but there was no sign of life among thesand-dunes and the stunted trees. And the _Plymouth Adventure_ haddisappeared leaving no trace excepting scattered bits of floatingwreckage.

  The pirate ship headed to follow the coast to the northward, on thechance that Ned Rackham's prize crew might have made a landingelsewhere. To Jack Cockrell the gift of life had been miraculouslyvouchsafed him and he felt secure for the moment. Joe's theory seemedplausible, that the pirates had abandoned the _Plymouth Adventure_ intime to avert drowning with her, and were driven away from the bight andthe 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 bettercould I know for certain."

  "Meanwhile this mad Blackbeard may be taken in one of his savagefrenzies and shoot me for sport," said young Master Cockrell, for whomexistence had come to be one hazard after another.

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

  And now the ship's officers drove the men to their work but they wereless abusive than usual. They seemed to reflect Blackbeard's milderhumor and it was manifest that they wished to avoid the crew'sresentment. Joe Hawkridge was puzzled and began to ferret it out amonghis friends who were trustworthy. They had their own suspicions and thegeneral opinion was that Blackbeard was in great dread of encounteringCaptain Stede Bonnet in the _Royal James_. It seemed that the _Revenge_had spoken a disabled merchant ship just after the storm and her skipperreported that he had been overhauled by Stede Bonnet a few days earlierand the best of his cargo stolen. Blackbeard had been seized withviolent rage but had suffered the ship to proceed on her way because ofhis own short-handed condition.

  With a prize crew lost in the _Plymouth Adventure_, includingSailing-Master Ned Rackham, and the two sloops of the squadron missingwith all hands, the terrible Blackbeard was in poor shape to meet thisCaptain Bonnet who hated him beyond measure. As if this were not gloomyenough, there were men in the _Revenge_ eager to sail under Bonnet'sflag and to mutiny if ever they sighted the _Royal James_. It behoovedBlackbeard to press on to that lonely inlet on the North Carolina coastand avoid the open sea until he could prepare to fight this dangerousfoeman.

  It surprised Jack Cockrell to see how quiet a pirate ship could be. Theruffians were bone-weary, for one thing, after the struggle to bring thevessel through the storm. And the scourge of tropic fever had left itsmarks. Moreover, the rum was running short because some of the casks hadbeen staved in the heavy weather and Blackbeard was doling it out asgrog with an ample dilution of water. There was no more dicing andbrawling and tipsy choruses. Sobered against their will, some of thesebloody-minded sinners talked repentance or shed tears over wives andchildren deserted in distant ports.

  The wind blew fair until the _Revenge_ approached the landmarks familiarto Blackbeard and found a channel which led to the wide mouth ofCherokee Inlet. It was a quiet roadstead sheltered from seaward byseveral small islands. The unpeopled swamp and forest fringed the shoresbut a green meadow and a margin of white sand offered a favorable placefor landing. As the _Revenge_ slowly rounded the last wooded point, thetall mast of a sloop became visible. The pirates cheered and dischargedtheir muskets in salute as they recognized one of the consorts which hadbeen blown away in the storm.

  Blackbeard strutted on his quarter-deck, no longer biting his nails infretful anxiety. He had donned the military coat with the glitteringbuttons and epaulets and the huge cocked hat with the feather in it. Henoted that the sloop, which was called the _Triumph_, fairly buzzed withmen, many more than her usual complement. No sooner had the ship let heranchor splash than a boat was sent over to her with the captain of thesloop who made haste to pay his compliments and explain his voyage. Hewas a portly, sallow man with a blustering manner and looked more like abailiff or a tapster than a brine-pickled gentleman of fortune.

  Blackbeard hailed him cordially and invited him into the cabin. The boatwaited alongside the _Revenge_ and the men scrambled aboard to swapyarns with the ship's crew. Jack Cockrell hovered near the group asthey squatted on their heels around a tub of grog and learned that the_Triumph_ had rescued the crew of the other sloop just before it hadfoundered. There were a hundred men of them, in all, crowded togetherlike dried herring, and part were sleeping ashore in huts of boughs andcanvas. No wonder Blackbeard was in blither spirits. Here was a companyto pick and choose from and so fill the depleted berth-deck of the_Revenge_.

  Finding the poop deserted, Joe Hawkridge ventured far enough to peer inat a cabin window. Blackbeard was at table, together with his firstmate, the chief gunner, the acting sailing-master, and the captain ofthe
sloop. They were exceeding noisy, singing most discordantly andlaughing at indecent jests. Suddenly Blackbeard whipped two pistols fromhis sash and fired them under the table, quite at random.

  The first mate leaped up with a horrible yell and clapped a hand to thecalf of his leg. Then he bolted out of the cabin, which was blue withsmoke, and limped in search of the surgeon. Joe Hawkridge dodged asidebut he heard the jovial Blackbeard shout, with a whoop of laughter:

  "Discipline, damme! If I don't kill one of you now and then, you'llforget who I am."

  Inasmuch as none of the other guests dared squeak after this episode, itwas to be inferred that they were properly impressed.

  THE FIRST MATE LEAPED UP WITH A HORRIBLE YELL]

  In a little while the mate returned with his leg neatly bandaged,announced that it was a mere flesh wound, and sat down as though nothingout of the ordinary had occurred to mar the festive occasion. Throughthe rest of the day, boats were passing between the ship and the sloopin a convivial reunion. Supper was to be cooked on the beach in greatiron kettles and a frolic would follow the feast. The sloop had rumenough to sluice all the parched gullets aboard the _Revenge_.

  Jack Cockrell had no desire to join this stupid revel but he was eagerto get ashore to discover what opportunity there might be to escape. Butthe wiser Joe Hawkridge counseled patience, saying:

  "Wait a bit. We'd be as helpless as any babes should we take to ourheels in this ungodly wilderness. Is there a town or plantation nearby?"

  "I know not," ruefully confessed Jack. "Charles Town lies to the south,and Virginia to the north. There my knowledge fetches up short."

  "And leagues of morass to flounder through, by the look of this coast,"said Joe. "We be without weapons, or food, or----"

  "I am a hot-headed fool, I grant you that," broke in Jack. "Now bestowyour sage advice."

  "You will not be allowed to go ashore, for one thing, Master Cockrell.Blackbeard has no notion of letting you get away from him to betray thisrendezvous and stir the colonies to send an expedition after him.Steady the helm, Jack, and watch for squalls. If I can read the signs,there is trouble afoot. And we must seek our own advantage in the nickof time."

  "But these wild sots no longer think of mutiny and the like, Joe. Theyare content to let the morrow go hang."

  "S-s-s-h, 'ware the master of the sloop," cautioned Joe. "He makes forthe gangway, the big lump of tallow."

  They moved away while Captain Richard Spender clumsily descended intohis boat, his broad face flushed, his breath asthmatic. He had a pipingvoice absurd for his bulk and the two lads amused themselves withmimicking him as the boat pulled in the direction of the sloop. So safeagainst surprise did Blackbeard regard himself in this lonely anchoragethat no more than a dozen men were left aboard to keep the ship throughthe night. Among these was Jack Cockrell, as his comrade had foreseen.It therefore happened that they remained together, for Joe hadvolunteered to join the anchor watch. In a melancholy mood the two ladsidled upon the after deck.

  The sun dropped behind the dark and tangled forest and flights of heronscame winging it home to the islets in the swamps. On the sward by thesilver strand the throng of pirates had stilled their clamor while arascal with a tenor voice held them enraptured with the haunting refrainof:

  "Sweet Annie frae the sea-beach came, Where Jockey's climbed the vessel's side: Ah! wha can keep her heart at hame, When Jockey's tossed aboon the tide?

  "Far off 'till distant realms he gangs, But I'se be true, as he ha' been; And when ilk lass around him thrangs, He'll think on Annie's faithful een."

  Forlorn Jack Cockrell had homesick thoughts and felt hopeless of loosingthe snares which bound him. All that sustained his courage was thesanguine disposition of Joe Hawkridge, whose youthful soul had been sobattered and toughened by dangers manifold on land and sea that heexpected nothing less. Listening to the pirate's moving ballad, they satand swung their legs from the ship's taffrail while their gaze idlyroved to the green curtain of undergrowth which ran lush to the water'sedge to the northward of the beach.

  It was Joe who called attention to a floating object which moved insidethe mouth of the small, tidal creek that wandered through the marshylowlands. In the shadowy light it could easily be mistaken for a logdrifting down on the ebb of the tide. This was what the lads assumed itto be until they both noticed a behavior curious in a log. The long, lowobject turned athwart the current at the entrance of the creek and shottoward the nearest bank as though strongly propelled.

  Joe lifted the telescope from its case in front of the woodenbinnacle-box and squinted long at the edge of the creek. Crude thoughthe glass was, he was enabled to discern that the object was, in truth,a log, but evidently hollowed out. Rounded at the ends, it held two menwhose figures so blended into the dusk that they disclosed themselvesonly when in motion.

  "A pirogue," said Joe, "and fashioned by Indians! What is the tribehereabouts? Have ye a guess?"

  "Roving Yemassees, or men of the Hatteras tribe," answered Jack. "Yonderbrace of savages will be scouts."

  "Aye, but there'll be no attack 'gainst this pirates' bivouac, rightunder the guns of the ships. The Indians are too wise to attempt it."

  "Look, Joe! Hand me the glass. Those two spies have quitted the pirogue.'Tis quite empty. They may lay up all night to creep closer and keepwatch on the camp."

  "Right enough, by Crambo! If we could but gain yon cypress canoe, andsteal along the coast by sail and paddle----"

  "'Tis the chance we prayed for," eagerly exclaimed Jack. "Dare we swimfor it?"

  "Not with a boat just coming off from shore. What if we try it in thenight and find the pirogue gone?"

  "We are stranded for sure, and Blackbeard will kill us."

  Baffled, they strained their eyes until the shore stood black in thestarlight, but as long as the dusk lingered they fancied they coulddescry the empty pirogue. The ship's boat which presently drew alongsidecontained Blackbeard himself and Captain Dick Spender of the _Triumph_sloop, besides several officers of the two vessels. They withdrew intothe cabin and there was prolonged discussion, lasting well towardmidnight.

  It was a secretive session, with trusted men of the boat's crew postedto keep eavesdroppers away from the hatches and windows, nor was thereany loud carousing. Some business was afoot and Jack wondered whether itmight concern the trouble which Joe had sworn was brewing under thesurface. A circumstance even more suspicious was that three of thesailors from the boat were called into the cabin. Joe Hawkridge knewthem as fellows loyal to Blackbeard through thick and thin. Drunkenbeasts, as a rule, they were cold sober to-night.

  As quietly as they had come, the whole party dropped into the boat andreturned either to the beach or to the sloop which rode at anchor twocable-lengths away. The _Revenge_ floated with no more activity on herdarkened decks. The few men of the watch drowsed at their stations orwistfully gazed at the fires ashore and the mob of pirates who moved inthe red glare. Jack Cockrell and Joe Hawkridge felt no desire for sleep.As the ship swung with the turn of the tide, they went to the side andleaned on the tall bulwark where they might catch the first glimpse ofthe shore with the break of day.

  Meanwhile they busied themselves with this wild scheme and that. Siftingthem out, it was resolved to swim from the ship at the firstopportunity. If they could not find the Indian pirogue, Joe would try toget into the pirates' camp by night and possess himself of an axe, anadze, a musket or two, and such food as he could smuggle out. Then, at apinch, they could hide themselves a little way inland and hew out apirogue of their own from a dry log. After hitting upon this plan, thebetter it seemed the more they thrashed it over.

  Unluckily it occurred to them so late in the night that they feared toattempt it then lest the dawn might overtake them while they wereswimming. 'Twas a great pity, said Joe, that their wits had hung fire,like a damp flint-lock, for this was the night when the pirates would bethe most slack and bef
uddled and it would be precious hard waitingthrough another day. Jack glumly agreed with this point of view.

  It was so near morning, however, that they lingered to scan the shore.Then it was observed that a pearly mist was rising from the swamp landsand spreading out over the water. It was almost like a fog which themorning breeze would dispel after a while. Rolling like smoke it hung solow that the topmast of the sloop rose above it although her hull waslike the gray ghost of a vessel.

  "No sign of wind as yet," said Joe, holding up a wetted finger, "andthat red sunset bespoke a calm, hot day. This odd smother o' mist maystay a couple of hours. Will ye venture it with me, Jack?"

  "Gladly! Over we go, before the watch is flogged awake by the bos'n'smate."

  They crept aft to the high stern and paid out a coil of rope until ittrailed in the water beneath the railed gallery which overhung the hugerudder. Joe belayed his end securely and slid over like a flash,twisting the rope around one leg and letting himself down as agile as amonkey. Without a splash he cast himself loose and Jack followed but notso adroitly. When he plopped into the water the commotion was liketossing a barrel overboard, but nobody sounded an alarm.

  They clung to the rusty rudder chains and listened. The ship was allquiet. Then out into the mist they launched themselves, swimming almostsubmerged, dreading to hear an outcry and the spatter of musket balls.But the veiling mist and the uncertain light of dawn soon protected thefugitives. It was slow, exhausting progress, hampered as they were bytheir breeches and shoes which could not be discarded. They tried tokeep a sense of direction, striking out for the mouth of the creek inwhich the pirogue had been moored, but the tide set them off the courseand the only visible marks were the spars of the ship behind them andthe sloop's topmast off to one side.

  JACK ALMOST BUMPED INTO THE DUGOUT CANOE]

  Jack swam more strongly and showed greater endurance because he had thebeef and had been better nourished all his life than the scrawny youngpowder boy who was more like a lath. Now and then Jack paused to treadwater while his shipmate clung to his shoulder and husbanded his waningstrength, with that indomitable grin on his freckled phiz. Of one thingthey were thankful, that the tide was bearing them farther away from thepirates' camp, which was now as still as though the sleepers were deadmen.

  "Blood and bones, but I have swum a league a'ready," gurgled Joe duringone of the halts.

  "Shut your mouth or you'll fill up to the hatch and founder," scoldedJack. "I see trees in the mist. The shore is scarce a pistol shot away."

  "I pray my keel scrapes soon," spluttered the waterlogged Hawkridge ashe kicked himself along in a final effort.

  Huzza, their feet touched the soft ooze and they fell over stumps androtted trunks buried under the surface. Scratched and beplastered withmud, they crawled out in muck which gripped them to the knees, androosted like buzzards upon the butt of a prostrate live-oak.

  "Marooned," quoth Joe, "to be eaten by snakes and alligators."

  "Nonsense," snapped Master Cockrell, who had hunted deer and wild-fowlon the Carolina coast. "We can pick our way with care. I have seenpleasanter landscapes than this, but I like it better than Blackbeard'scompany."

  There was no disputing this statement and Joe plucked up spirit, as washis habit when another arduous task confronted him. Cautiously they madetheir way from one quaking patch of sedge to another or scrambled totheir middles. There came a ridge of higher ground thick with bramblesand knotted vines and they traversed this with less misery. A gleam ofwater among the trees and they took it to be the creek which they soughtto find. Wary of lurking Indians, they wormed along on their stomachsand so came to the high swamp grass of the bank.

  They swam the creek and crept toward its mouth. Jack was rooting alonglike a bear when he almost bumped into the dugout canoe which had lookedso very like a stranded log. It was tied to a tree by a line of twistedfibre and the rising tide had borne it well up into the marsh. Here itwas invisible from the ship and only a miracle of good fortune hadrevealed it to the lads in that glimpse from the deck at sundown.

  They crawled over the gunwale and slumped in the bottom of the pirogue,which was larger than they expected, a clumsy yet seaworthy craft with awide floor and space to crowd a dozen men. Fire had helped to hollow itfrom a giant of a cypress log, for the inner skin was charred black.Three roughly made paddles were discovered. This was tremendouslyimportant, and all they lacked was a mast and sail to be truenavigators.

  Something else they presently found which was so unlooked for, soincredible, that they could only gape and stare at each other. Tucked inthe bow was a seaman's jacket of tarred canvas, of the kind used in wetweather. Sewed to the inside of it was a pocket of leather with abuttoned flap. This Jack Cockrell proceeded to explore, recovering fromhis stupefaction, and fished out a wallet bound in sharkskin as was thehabit of sailors to make for themselves in tropic waters. It containednothing of value, a few scraps of paper stitched together, a bit ofcoral, a lock of yellow hair, a Spanish coin, some shreds of driedtobacco leaf.

  Carefully Jack examined the ragged sheets of paper which seemed to be acarelessly jotted diary of dates and events. Upon the last leaf wasscrawled, "_Bill Saxby, His Share_," and beneath this entry such itemsas these:

  "Aprl. ye 17--A Spanish shippe rich laden. 1 sack Vanilla. 2 Rolls Blue Cloth of Peru. 1 Packet Bezoar Stones.

  "May ye 24--A Poor Shippe. 3 Bars of Silver. 1 Case Cordial Waters. A Golden Candle-stick. My share by Lot afore ye Mast."

  Joe Hawkridge could neither read nor write but he had ready knowledgeof the meaning of these entries and he cried excitedly:

  "Say the name again, Jack. Bill Saxby, His Share. Strike me blind, but Iwas chums with Bill when we lay off Honduras. As decent a lad as everwent a-piratin'! A heart of oak is Bill, hailin' from London town."

  "But what of the riddle?" impatiently demanded Jack. "Whence this Indianpirogue? And where is Bill Saxby?"

  "He sailed with Stede Bonnet, bless ye," answered Joe. "These two men wespied in the canoe last night were no Indians. _They were Cap'n Bonnet'smen._ Indians would ha' hid the pirogue more craftily."

  "But they came not along the coast. Did they drop down this creek fromsomewhere inland?"

  "There you put me in stays," confessed Joe. "One thing I can swear. Theywere sent to look for Blackbeard's ships. And I sore mistrust they werecaught whilst prowling near the camp. Else they would ha' come back tothe canoe before day."