by Howard Pyle
“Indeed I will,” cried Jack. “I’m glad enough to get away to be willing to go anywhere. And then, do you see, you’ll be along, Dred.”
Dred was still holding him by the arm, and he gave it a squeeze. “Well then, we’ll just go up to Bullock’s and have a talk with the captain about it,” he said.
They had left the landing by now and were ascending a little rise of ground to the house, the door of which stood open, and from which was coming the sound of loud voices, and now and then a burst of laughter. Dred, still holding Jack by the arm, led him up to the door of the house and into it. It seemed to be a sort of store, or drinking-house — a wide, barrack, shed-like place. There was a kind of bench or counter, some shelves seemingly empty, and two or three barrels, apparently of spirits. It was reeking hot, and full of men who were drinking and talking with loud voices. Some of the men had the appearance of being planters or settlers; others looked like sailors.
Dred, still holding Jack by the arm, looked around for a brief moment, then he elbowed his way through the crowd toward the other end of the room, almost dragging Jack with him. “Who have you got there, Dred?”— “Who’s that, Dred?” was asked by a dozen voices as Dred pushed his way up the length of the room. Dred did not reply; he led Jack up to a man who sat upon a barrel, swinging one leg and holding a glass of spirits in the hand that rested upon his knee.
Jack knew the man as soon as he saw him. It was the stranger who had twice come to the Roost. He was still dressed in the sort of sailor dress in which Jack had last seen him, and his beard was plaited into three plaits that hung down and over his breast. Jack saw that he had been drinking, perhaps a great deal. He did not move, except to raise his eyes sullenly as Dred led Jack up to him. “Captain,” said Dred, “this young man’s just come ashore down at the wharf. I know him very well, seeing as how he came over from England with me and that we was, so to say, messmates. He’s run away from his master, and says he’d like to ‘list with us. He’s a good, able-bodied lad, and very willing too.”
“Don’t you come from Mr. Parker’s?” said the captain, in his hoarse, husky voice.
“Yes, I do,” said Jack. “He was going to have me whipped, and I ran away from him.”
“I thought I knew your face,” said the pirate. “And so you’re running away, are you? And he was going to beat you, was he? Well, I dare say you deserved it. What were you doing to have him beat you?”
The strange, shaggy crowd pressed up close around them, and Jack gazed about him at the half-drunken faces. “I was doing naught to be whipped for,” he said. “I went away with the overseer, and while I was gone Mr. Parker came back. He tried to whip me with a riding-whip, and while I was keeping him off he fell down. He was going to have me beaten for that to-morrow, and so I ran away.”
The pirate captain stared at him for a little while of gloomy silence, shaking his head slowly from side to side the while. “Well, then,” he said, “Mr. Parker and I are very good friends, and I don’t choose to help his servants to run away from him. So I’ll just make across to his place to-morrow, and drop you on our way up the river.”
Jack saw that the pirate was not sober, and he turned to look to Dred. Dred had let go his hold upon Jack’s arm; now he leaned over toward the pirate captain, and began whispering in his ear, the other listening gloomily and sullenly, and Jack watching them both with an anxious intentness. “Well, I can’t help that,” the pirate said aloud to something that Dred urged; and he raised his elbow and tried to push the other away. Dred leaned forward to whisper some last words as the other thrust him off. “I wish you wouldn’t come here troubling me this way, Chris Dred,” he said. “I don’t care anything about the fellow, he won’t be any use to me. Well, then, take him aboard if you choose, and I’ll think about it to-morrow morning. Now you go back to the sloop. You shouldn’t ha’ left it, as ’tis.”
Again Dred took Jack by the arm. “Come along, Jack,” he said, “’tis all right now.”
“But he said he was going to send me back,” said Jack, as they made their way back through the room, and toward the open air.
“Oh, that’s all very well; he won’t send you back; you just set your mind at rest on that. I know him as well as I know my own hand. He’s give in so far now, he won’t send you back.” Then, as they came out of doors once more— “Lord!” drawing a deep breath, “but it do feel good to get a breath of fresh air.”
“Tell me,” said Jack, as they walked down to the wharf together, “was that Blackbeard?”
“HE LED JACK UP TO THE MAN WHO SAT UPON A BARREL.”
“Ay,” said Dred, “that’s what they call him hereabouts.”
“Why, then,” said Jack, “I’ve seen him before. He was over to the Roost twice in the last two weeks, but I never thought ’twas Blackbeard.”
When, after a deep and profound sleep, Jack awoke almost at the dawn of the following day, he looked about him, at first not knowing just where he was. The hold of the sloop was full of the forms of sleeping men huddled into groups and clusters. The air was heavy and oppressive. He sat for a while staring about him, then suddenly he remembered everything — his surroundings, and how he had fallen asleep there the night before. He roused himself and, stepping cautiously over the sleeping forms without disturbing them, climbed up the ladder to the deck above.
A thick fog had arisen during the night, and everything was shrouded in an impenetrable mist that drifted in great clouds across the deck. The ropes and sheets were wet and fuzzy with the moisture that had settled upon them, and the sails looked heavy and sodden with dampness, the decks and the two boats hanging from the davits wet and shining with moisture. Two or three of the crew were upon watch in the early morning. One of them, his hair and woolen cap white with particles of the drifting mist, lay stretched upon the top of the galley deck-house, a carbine lying beside him. He was smoking his pipe, a faint, blue thread of smoke rising into the mist-laden air. He raised himself upon his elbow and stared at Jack as he came up on deck. The cook, who was also awake, was busy in the galley, and every now and then the clatter of pans sounded loud in the damp silence. A cloud of smoke from the newly-lighted galley fire rolled in great volume out of the stovepipe and drifted slowly across the deck and through the ratlines. In the brightening light Jack could see more of his surroundings. There was a large cannon in the bow of the sloop, partly covered with a tarpaulin, and there were two carronades amidships. The sloop still lay lashed to the end of the wharf. The shore was hidden in the fog, which opened now and then, just showing a dim, fleeting, misty outline which, the next moment, would be again lost in the drifting cloud.
A figure, dim and white in the distance, stood looking over the stern down into the water. It was very familiar to Jack, and then presently it turned toward him and he saw it was Christian Dred. As soon as Dred saw Jack he came directly forward to where he was. “Well,” he said, catching him by the arm and shaking it, “here we be together again, hey?”
Jack laughed, and then he asked, “Are you sure he — Captain Teach — won’t send me back to Mr. Parker again?”
“Why, no,” said Dred, “in course he won’t. That was only his talk last night while he was in his drink. He don’t care nothing for Mr. Parker, and he won’t bother to send you back again. Just you rest your mind easy on that, Jack. If I’d thought there was any chance of his sending you back there, I wouldn’t ‘a’ kept you aboard here, last night, and you may be sure of that. But ’tis mightily queer, Jack, to think that Mr. Parker was only with us yesterday art’noon, and here you comes and finds your way aboard in the night. What did you come over here for, anyhow?”
As Jack stood, giving Dred a brief account of his adventures and of his plans of escape, the signs of awakening life began gradually to show aboard the sloop. The men were coming up from below, and after a while the captain himself came up on deck, from the cabin aft. He stood for a while, his head just showing above the companion-way, looking about him with eyes heavy an
d bleared with sleep. Then he came slowly up on deck. He beckoned to one of the men — a negro — who ran in his bare feet and hauled up a pail of water from alongside. Jack, from a distance, watched the pirate captain as he washed his face in the water, puffing and splashing and spluttering, rubbing it into his shaggy hair. Then he fished out a yellow and greasy comb from his pocket, and, with a great deal of care, parted his hair in the middle and smoothed it down on either side. Then he began plaiting the two locks at his temples, looking about him all the while with his heavy lowering gaze. Presently his eyes fell upon Jack. “Come here,” he said, without stopping his toilet, and Jack came forward and stood before him. “What’s your name?” he asked. He had finished plaiting the first long, thin lock, and was winding a bit of string around it.
“Jack Ballister.”
“You waited on Mr. Dick Parker, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” said Jack.
“Well, d’ye think you could wait on a gentlewoman?”
“I don’t know,” said Jack; “I believe I could.”
“Well, I expect a lady aboard here, maybe to-night, and it may be I’ll call on you to wait upon her now and then. D’ye think ye could?”
“I believe I could,” said Jack.
“Very well, that will do now. You can go.”
The sound of hissing and sizzling was coming from the galley, and as Jack went forward again, the air was full of the smell of cooking pork.
During the early part of the morning a rude cart drawn by two oxen came out along the wharf. It was driven by a negro, and two men with carbines over their shoulders marched beside it. There were two barrels full of fresh water in the cart, and a half dozen of the crew presently rolled them aboard the sloop.
A breeze had come up as the sun rose higher, and in an hour or more — it was about the middle of the morning — the fog began to drift away in bright yellow clouds, through which the disk of the sun shone thin and watery. Now and then the outline of the houses on the shore stood out faint and dim; they looked very different to Jack in the wide light of day. Then the sun burst out in a sudden bright, hot gleam. The pirate captain had gone below, but Dred and the sailing-master, Hands, were on deck. The boatswain’s whistle trilled shrilly, and the great patched, dingy mainsail, flapping and bellying sluggishly, rose slowly with the yo-hoing of the sailors and the creaking of block and tackle. The lines were cast loose, Dred standing directing the men as they pushed the sloop off with the sweeps. Some of the settlers had come down to the shore, and stood watching. “All away!” called Dred, and Hands spun the wheel around. The sloop fell slowly off, the sail filling out smooth and round. The men on the wharf shouted an adieu, and two or three of the men aboard the sloop replied, and then they were out in the wide expanse of the river.
CHAPTER XXIV
AT MARLBOROUGH
SOME TIME A little after noon the sloop sailed into the wide mouth of a lesser stream that opened into the broader waters of the James.
The pirate captain lounged upon the rail not far from Dred, who held the wheel, stooping as he looked out ahead under the boom of the mainsail. The gunner, a man named Morton, joined the pirate captain, with whom he stood talking for a while in low tones, Dred every now and then turning to speak to them. The sloop, close hauled to the wind, drifted slowly into the tributary river. “I reckon they’re going to bring her up back o’ the p’int yonder,” said one of the pirates to Jack, where nobody’ll be like to see us till we gets our young lady aboard.
“Isn’t that a house over on the other side of the river?” asked Jack. “Those look like chimneys over the top of the trees.”
“Why, yes,” said the other, “that’s a place they call Marlborough. They say ’tis a grand, big, fine house.”
“Marlborough!” said Jack, “and so ’tis a big, fine house, for I’ve been there myself and have seen it; ’tis as grand a house as ever you would wish to see.”
“Do you, then, know it?” said the other. “Well, ’tis there the captain’s going to-night to bring off a young lady he’s going to fetch down to North Caroliny.”
Jack listened to the man, not for a moment supposing anything else than that the young lady of whom the pirate spoke was to be a willing passenger. He only wondered vaguely why she should choose to go with Blackbeard.
The sloop lay in the creek all that afternoon. Dred was in the cabin nearly all the time, and Jack saw almost nothing of him. Meantime the crew occupied themselves variously. Six of them near Jack were playing cards intently; sometimes in silence, sometimes breaking out into loud bursts of talking and swearing. Jack lay upon the forecastle hatch watching them. Every now and then the trum-trumming of Blackbeard’s guitar sounded from the cabin. As the dealer dealt the cards around, one of the pirates snapped his fingers in time to the strumming of the music. “I tell you what ’tis, messmates,” he said, “the captain be the masterest hand at the guitar that ever I heard in all my life.”
“To be sure,” said another, “he plays well enough, but Jem Willoughby down at Ocracock can give him points how to play.”
“Did ye ever hear Jem Willoughby play the fandango?” said one of a half-dozen men who lay at a little distance under the shade of the rail.
“Never mind Jem Willoughby and the fandango now,” said the dealer, as he took up his hand of cards and, wetting his thumb, ran them over; “you play your game, messmates, and never mind Jem Willoughby.”
Again they played with silent intentness. Meantime a negro was dancing in the forecastle below. From above, Jack could see his dim form obscurely in the darker depths, and, as he watched the hands of cards that the others played, he could not but hearken to the shuffling and pat of the dancing feet sounding in rhythmical time to the clapping of hands. Then, after awhile, there was a sudden burst of talking from the card-players, and the dealer reached out and raked in the half score of silver pieces that lay upon the deck-house.
The afternoon slowly waned; the sun set, and a dim gray of twilight seemed to rise from the swampy lagoon. Then the dusk shaded darker and darker to the dimness of early nightfall. Suddenly the pirate captain came up on deck, followed by Hands and Dred. Dred spoke to the boatswain, who came forward directly and ordered the crews of the three boats to lower them and to bring them alongside. Then there followed a bustle of preparation. Presently, through the confusion, Jack saw that the men were arming themselves. They were going down below into the cabin and were coming up again, each with a pistol or a brace of pistols and a cutlass. Finally Morton, the gunner, came up on deck, and soon after the crews began scrambling over the rail and into the three boats with a good deal of noise and disorder. It was after dark when they finally pushed off from the sloop. The pirate captain sat in the stern of the yawl-boat, Hands took command of one of the others, and Dred and Morton went off in the third. Jack stood watching them pull away into the darkness, the regular chug-chug-chug of the oars in the rowlocks sounding fainter and fainter as the dim forms of the boats were lost in the obscurity of the distance.
Everything seemed strangely silent after the boats were gone. Only five men besides Jack remained aboard the sloop, and the solitude of the darkness that seemed to envelop them all around about was only emphasized by the tide that gurgled and lapped alongside. “Who is it they’re going to fetch from Marlborough?” Jack asked of one of the men who stood beside him leaning over the rail, smoking his pipe and looking after his companions.
“Who?” said he, without looking around. “Why, they’re going to fetch a young lady”; and that was all Jack knew until she was actually aboard the pirate sloop.
Colonel Parker was away from home. He had gone to Williamsburgh, but there was some company at Marlborough — Mr. Cartwright (a cousin of Madam Parker’s), his wife, and the Reverend Jonathan Jones, minister of Marlborough parish church — a rather sleek, round-faced man, dressed in sober clerical black, with a very white wig and a smooth, clean, starched band of fine, semi-transparent linen. Madam Parker and her guests s
at at a game of ruff. Miss Eleanor Parker was trying a piece of music at the spinet, playing smoothly but with an effort at certain points, and then stumbling at the more difficult passages, to which she sometimes returned, repeating them. The four played their game out without speaking, and then, as the last trick was taken, released the restraint of attentive silence to a sudden return of ease. “’Twas two by honors this time, I think,” said Mr. Cartwright to Madam Parker, who was his partner.
“Yes,” she said, “I held the queen and ace myself, and you the knave.”
“Then that makes four points for us,” said Mr. Cartwright, as he marked them.
“’Tis strange how ill the hands run with me to-night,” said the reverend gentleman; “that makes the third hand running without a single court card.” He opened his snuff-box and offered it to Madam Parker, and then to the others, taking finally a profound and vigorous pinch himself, and then shutting the lid of the box with a snap. Madam Parker and her partner smiled with the amused good-nature of winners at the game.
“Upon my word, Eleanor,” said Madam Parker, “I wish you would not play so loud; my nerves are all of a jingle to-day; as ’tis, I can’t fix my mind on the game.” The young lady made no answer; she did not even turn round, but she continued her playing in a more subdued key.
“Was not that Lady Betty Arkwright in your pew last Sunday, Madam?” asked the rector of Madam Parker, as he shuffled the cards.
“Yes, ’twas,” said the lady. “She came up from Williamsburgh last week, and Colonel Parker went back with her yesterday.”