Regardless of his failings, we must admit that young Teach would have won the highest esteem of an efficiency expert (had such beings existed in his day), for he believed implicitly that a thing worth doing at all was worth doing well and bent all his energies to practising his profession in a thorough manner. As an example of the rewards [[47]]or successes attendant upon application to an idea, Teach was a model, for within a space of two years from the time he announced his intention of turning corsair he could lay undisputed claim to being the world’s greatest pirate.
Moreover, the amiable Edward was a firm believer in publicity and in the spectacular. Indeed, he very evidently was far in advance of his time, and to-day he would have brought untold joy to the heart of a film director and would be drawing a far larger income than he ever enjoyed through his chosen career. If ever there was an original of the buccaneer of melodrama and lurid fiction, it must have been Teach; only, no author or playwright would ever dare draw a character as bizarre, repulsive, and hideously ferocious as this Prince of Pirates.
Of immense size and coarse and brutal aspect, Teach nurtured a huge black beard which covered his ugly face to his eyes, and which, falling to his waist, was braided into innumerable small pigtails, the ends being tied together over his ears. His hair, also of inky hue, fell to his shoulders and almost met his beetling, bushy black eyebrows over his forehead. As though not ferocious-looking enough naturally, he was accustomed, when making an attack, to stick burning slow-matches in hair and [[48]]beard, which surrounded his fierce face and gleaming eyes with a ring of fire and smoke and, according to a contemporaneous description, “glowed most horribly.” Unlike many of his notorious predecessors and compeers, Blackbeard was no dandy. His favorite costume was a long-skirted, deep-cuffed coat, much the worse for wear and dribbled liquor; a rough shirt open to the waist and exposing a chest as hairy as a gorilla’s; short, wide breeches, and low seaman’s shoes. Stockings he usually dispensed with, and a battered felt hat of the type made familiar by stage robbers crowned his ebon mane, while, to complete his get-up, a pair of cutlasses and a knife or two hung at his belt and half a dozen pistols were stuck through his sash.
BLACKBEARD
And, in truth, Blackbeard’s character was as ferocious as his looks, and his soul as black as his whiskers. There was not a single redeeming feature about him, unless it was his sheer courage, and altogether he was a despicable scoundrel. On more than one occasion he robbed and murdered his own men, and he cared not a whit whether prizes he took were flying the flag of his mother country or of another. To him, torture and butchery were mere pastimes, and one day, just as a joke, he placed seventeen of his own crew on a tiny desert island, promising to return at intervals [[49]]to see how long they could survive without food or water. Fortunately for the castaways, Teach was unable to carry out this, to him, interesting experiment in human endurance, for another corsair,—and a rank amateur, at that,—Major Stede Bonnet, rescued the marooned pirates.
No doubt time hung heavy on the pirates’ hands at times as they sailed aimlessly about waiting for a prize, but those upon Blackbeard’s ship could always be sure that tedium would not be their lot. As an entertainer Teach was a marvel, albeit his ideas of amusement were not always appreciated by others and he must have devoted a considerable portion of his spare time to inventing new schemes to relieve the monotony between fights.
THE VIGILANT AS ORIGINALLY RIGGED
Once, when his ship was becalmed on a blistering hot day and no sail broke the scintillating horizon, the resourceful Blackbeard appeared on deck hatless, coatless, and in his bare feet, and proposed that his shipmates should make a little “hell of their own,” adding that, as they were all bound for the lower regions eventually, it would be interesting to learn in advance who would be able to bear it the longest. As his crew well knew that any imitation devised would be nothing to the inferno their captain would raise if they declined his invitation, they rather hesitatingly and half-heartedly fell in [[50]]with his plan. Thereupon Teach and his men—some of whom had to be urged by sundry well-aimed kicks and blows—descended into the ship’s hold and, having securely fastened the hatches, set fire to several kegs of sulphur and seated themselves upon the stone ballast.