There was not much intercourse between Blackbeard and Bonnet at Topsail Inlet. The pirate was on very good terms with the authorities at that place, who for their own sakes cared not much to interfere with him, and Bonnet had his own work in hand and industriously engaged in it. He went to Bath and got his pardon; he procured a clearance for St. Thomas, where he freely announced his intention to take out a commission as privateer, and he fitted out his vessel as best he could. Of men he had not many, but when he left the inlet he sailed down to an island on the coast, where Blackbeard, having had too many men on his return from Charles Town, had marooned a large number of the sailors belonging to his different crews, finding this the easiest way of getting rid of them. Bonnet took these men on board with the avowed intention of taking them to St. Thomas, and then he set sail upon the high seas as free and untrammelled as a fish-hawk sweeping over the surface of a harbour with clearance papers tied to his leg.
Stede Bonnet had changed very much since he last trod the quarter-deck of the Revenge as her captain. He was not so important to look at, and he put on fewer airs of authority, but he issued a great many more commands. In fact, he had learned much about a sailor's life, of navigation and the management of a vessel, and was far better able to command a ship than he had ever been before. He had had a long rest from the position of a pirate captain, and he had not failed to take advantage of the lessons which had been involuntarily given him by the veteran scoundrels who had held him in contempt. He was now, to a great extent, sailing-master as well as captain of the Revenge; but Ben Greenway, who was much given to that sort of thing, undertook to offer Bonnet some advice in regard to his course.
"I am no sailor," said he, "but I ken a chart when I see it, an' it is my opeenion that there is no need o' your sailin' so far to the east before ye turn about southward. There is naething much stickin' out from the coast between here an' St. Thomas."
Bonnet looked at the Scotchman with lofty contempt.
"Perhaps you can tell me," said he, "what there is stickin' out from the coast between here and Ocracoke Inlet, where you yourself told me that Blackbeard had gone with the one sloop he kept for himself?"
"Blackbeard!" shouted the Scotchman, "an' what in the de'il have ye got to do wi' Blackbeard?"
"Do with that infernal dog?" cried Bonnet, "I have everything to do with him before I do aught with anybody or anything besides. He stole from me my possessions, he degraded me from my position, he made me a laughing-stock to my men, and he even made me blush and bow my head with shame before my daughter and my brother-in-law, two people in whose sight I would have stood up grander and bolder than before any others in the world. He took away from me my sword and he gave me instead a wretched pen; he made me nothing where I had been everything. He even ceased to consider me any more than if I had been the dirty deck under his feet. And then, when he had done with my property and could get no more good out of it, he cast it to me in charity as a man would toss a penny to a beggar. Before I sail anywhere else, Ben Greenway," continued Bonnet, "I sail for Ocracoke Inlet, and when I sight Blackbeard's miserable little sloop I shall pour broadside after broadside into her until I sink his wretched craft with his bedizened carcass on board of it."
"But wi' your men stand by ye?" cried Greenway. "Ye're neither a pirate nor a vessel o' war to enter into a business like that."
Bonnet swore one of his greatest oaths. "There is no business nor war for me, Ben Greenway," he cried, "until I have taught that insolent Blackbeard what manner of man I am."
Ben Greenway was very much disheartened. "If Blackbeard should sink the Revenge instead of Master Bonnet sinking him," he said to himself, "and would be kind enough to maroon my old master an' me, it might be the best for everybody after all. Master Bonnet is vera humble-minded an' complacent when bad fortune comes upon him, an' it is my opeenion that on a desert island I could weel manage him for the good o' his soul."