As the sloop approached the pirate they threw in upon her deck a new sort of hand-grenades. They consisted of common junk bottles, filled with powder, balls, and slugs, and were exploded by a fuse passing through the mouth. They would have done great execution had not the men been concealed in the hold.
The moment the bows of the sloop touched the pirate’s ship, as the smoke cleared away a little, Blackbeard, seeing but few on deck, shouted to his men:
“The villains are all knocked in the head, excepting three or four. Let us jump on board and cut them down.”
The order was instantly obeyed. Fourteen pirates, with flashing sabres, leaped over the bows of Maynard’s sloop, upon his deck. There were but twelve men unwounded in the hold. At a given signal they rushed up, and a battle of utter desperation ensued.
Blackbeard sprang toward Lieutenant Maynard, who was at the helm. Their pistols were discharged simultaneously. The pirate received a slight, but not a disabling wound. They rushed upon each other with their swords. In the fierce conflict the blade of Maynard’s sword broke in his hand. He stepped back to cock a pistol. Blackbeard was just in the act of cutting him down, when one of Maynard’s men struck him from behind, inflicting a terrible gash upon his neck. At the same moment the desperado, who seemed to be almost insensible to wounds, received a shot in his body from the lieutenant’s pistol.
The other sloop, called the Ranger, now came up and boarded the pirate. Blackbeard fought like a tiger. At length a pistol-shot pierced some vital part and he fell dead, after having received twenty-five wounds. Eight more of the pirates who had boarded Maynard’s sloop were weltering in their blood. The rest, many of them severely wounded, leaped overboard. The drowning wretches cried for quarter. It was granted. They were reserved only that they might be hanged.
Blackbeard’s head was cut from his body, and hung at the end of the bowsprit of Maynard’s sloop. With this revolting trophy he sailed into Newbern to obtain relief for his wounded men. In examining the papers found on board the pirate’s vessel, the correspondence was discovered between Governor Eden and his secretary with the pirate. There were also several merchants in New York who were in friendly communication with him. These papers would doubtless have been destroyed had it not been for the desperate resolve which the pirate had formed.
Blackbeard had but little hope of escaping. He therefore posted one of the most demoniac of the pirates, with a match, in the powder-room. Assuring him that if they were taken they would assuredly be hanged, and that it was far better to die by their own action, in an instant, than to perish upon the scaffold, he instructed him that should the ship be boarded and captured, he was to apply the match and blow them all up together. It chanced that there were two prisoners in the ship’s hold. They seized the pirate, and prevented him from executing his design.
It was this same Blackbeard, to whom we have already alluded, who one day, when flushed with drink, said to his boon companions:
“Come, let us make a hell of our own, and see who can stand it longest.”