Blackbeard wanted a little lay-off from years of steady grind. Then, too, it was January, with its season of new resolutions; why not start the year right?
They all talked it over, coming along the Virginia coast—near where they had heard of the proclamation—and it rather appealed to everybody. They grew solemn, serious, not a little drunk, and decided to break up. Here was a chance to wipe the slate clean and start all over again.
They anchored in Ocracoke Inlet and marched off to take the Act. Let us go with them.
Lithe chaps, aren’t they? See how the muscles ripple and play under those bright silk shirts; how column-like the brown necks groove into the bulging shoulders; in the fine, perfect pink of condition every one; strong, you can easily see; strong everywhere, that is, except in the head. Weak, there, lamentably weak.
In the heart, too, for they are really bad, capable of all evil, for which their environment and early associations can extenuate but not exculpate them. In truth, these are the creatures of a dark age; these men believe in witches and fear to whistle aboard ship lest they blow up a tempest. Most of these fellows are Englishmen, with some Spaniards and Frenchmen, all caring little for international animosities, enfranchised in the Commonwealth of Crime. You can hear the outlandish burring of the Yorkshiremen, the hissing z’s of the West Englander, the pitch, too, of what is to become the Cockney whine of a little later day, tussling with a jargon made up of many languages, founded on English.
Notice, too, these negroes from Barbados and other islands of the Indies, children of slaves brought but lately from Africa for the plantations. These don’t rate as seamen on even the pirate ships, but are menials whose big job is to keep continually at the pumps. Still, it seems all a great lark to them; see how they laugh, joke, leap around in unequalled vigor, till the great gold rings in their ears, the gold chains about their necks and the heavy metal bangles on their wrists jingle and rattle with their motions. This thing of jewelry is affected by white and black alike; and how they like those wide, many-hued sashes, and the silk stockings under their knee-length breeches!
So they roll, seaman fashion, singing and romping to the small frame house where reigns the servant of the Proprietors and the master of the colonists, his Excellency, Governor Eden. At their head goes that strangest of all the strange creatures of the sea, that powerful, ape-like figure swathed hideously in hair—to-day all curled in hundreds of ringlets smeared with pomatum—looking like a thing from a bad dream.
They bulge unafraid into the mansion; full weaponed and together, they fear nothing at sea or ashore. But nobody is of a mind to trifle with them; the folk here are used to seeing everything that is grotesque washed up by the sea; nay, these men have many acquaintances among the inhabitants, for not a few have shipped from these parts.
Governor Eden enters, portly in a London flowered-silk waistcoat, stylish French shoes and peruke, high-pointed and white-powdered. He gasps a little at the gang jammed into the room and glances sharply over at Tobias Knight, Secretary of the Province, who a moment ago was scratching with his quill pen an encouraging story of graft to the Proprietors at home, but who now is nervously pulling his sword more accessibly across his round fat knees. Neither he nor the governor had even seen anything quite like that in old Pall Mall, you know.
“Takin’ the Act, y’honor,” growled Blackbeard, leering at constituted authority.