Another day or so of strain and another silence from the town. Again Blackbeard stamped about and waved his cutlass and carried on as any obstreperous and brutal drunk might be apt to do. Oh, for a king’s ship to happen along as chucker-out! But king’s ships, like the night watch, are generally anywhere but where they’re needed.
Blackbeard filed the frightened hostages forth again. This time he had the machinery of their destruction ready,—a huge black, his great-muscled right arm bare to the shoulder, his hand hefting a bright cutlass. Blackbeard, perched on a keg of powder, beckoned to his captives in mocking solicitude.
“Step up, pretties,” he leered, “and get your hair cut.”
This was no opera, comic or otherwise. It was a situation to be met, and immediately. One whom history does not remember spoke up. “Cap’n Blackbeard,” said he, talking for his life, “we’ve decided if you’ll be so good as to let us, to join with you if you’re going to take the town. We’ll help you. They’ve betrayed us for a few pills and powders, so we owe them nothing.”
“Spoke like a man,” said Blackbeard. “You’re proper men; you’ll be real cocks of the old game. Heave the anchor and shot the guns—the tide will be right in an hour.”
Perhaps this was not a heroic subterfuge; but let those judge who have been hostages, helpless in the hands of such a desperado. It saved the lives of a number of folk. For ere the tide lifted them over the bar the longboat returned with Richards, the pirate boatmen and great piles of all sorts of medicines. The town had capitulated. There would come another day, it properly figured, and its wisdom was justified by the event.
Blackbeard left the merchant brig and its passengers rocking at the bar, but by an unfortunate oversight he sailed off with the ship’s chest containing the gold coins and the pieces-of-eight.
Partnership was dissolved soon after leaving Charles Town. Blackbeard had already apparently decided to abdicate the cocked hat of an admiral and assume the subordinate rank of a captain. He planned to concentrate his power in his one vessel.
So without concern he returned the dissatisfied Bonnet to the Revenge and recalled Richards and the hardiest members of the Revenge’s personnel, leaving Bonnet with half a dozen hands of indifferent expertness to work the sloop.
That accounted for one of his three tenders. The second he resolved to abandon at Topsail Inlet, on his way to Ocracoke. This he effected in the regular Blackbeard fashion by ordering it driven ashore at Topsail Inlet and wrecked. Her crew might make what escape they could from the mess. They could not argue with the forty muzzles of his guns, so crack went the sloop’s hull upon the rocks, while Blackbeard lay by and laughed at the men struggling in the surf.