CHAPTER XV
MR. PETER FORBES MOURNS HIS NEPHEW
IT seems a long time, in the course of this story, since the honorable Secretary of the Council, Mr. Peter Arbuthnot Forbes, was forced to sail in to Charles Town from the Plymouth Adventure on that most humiliating errand of finding medicines for Blackbeard's fever-smitten rogues. For the sake of his own dear nephew and the other hostages detained on board, he had endeavored to perform his bargain and was returning across the bar when the threatening clouds and other portents of a violent storm caused the seamen to lose heart. They put about and drove back into the harbor for shelter in the very nick of time.
These were pirates from Blackbeard's crew, it may be recalled, with his grizzled, scarred boatswain at the tiller. They had felt safe enough to swagger and ruffle it through the streets of Charles Town and to terrify the people. Their worthless lives were protected by the hostages who waited in fear and trembling. The town seethed with indignation and was hot with shame. There would be no more of the friendly traffic with pirates.
It was fully believed that the wretched Blackbeard would be as good as his word in allowing no more than two days' grace. Therefore when Mr. Peter Forbes came back in the boat to inform his neighbors that he had been unable to reach the ship, it was sadly taken for granted that those helpless passengers had been put to death. Forthwith the pirates of the boat's crew were seized and thrown in gaol. There they lay in double irons until the Council met and ordered them to be tried. In accordance with the verdict the six seamen and the boatswain were promptly hanged by the neck from the same gallows at White Point hard by the town. And the people no longer shivered at the name of Blackbeard nor feared his vengeance. Their fighting blood was thoroughly aroused.
Not long after this, there arrived from England a new Governor of the Province, a man of honor and resolution who approved what had been done. This Governor Johnson proceeded to organize the town for defense, building batteries on Sullivan's Island, recruiting the seafaring men in the militia, and seeking to obtain merchant vessels which could be employed as armed cruisers. Learning that the Governor of North Carolina was in a corrupt partnership with pirates, he sent messages to Virginia to solicit coöperation.
This activity made much work for Secretary Peter Forbes who forsook his intention of going to England to beg the coöperation of his Majesty's Government against the plague of pirates. Dapper and plump and important as of yore, his florid face was clouded with sorrow and he seemed a much older man. He mourned his nephew, Jack Cockrell, as no more and felt as though he had lost an only son. Every angry word he had ever addressed the lad, every hasty punishment inflicted, hurt him grievously.
It was a solace to talk with winsome Dorothy Stuart because hers was the bright optimism of youth and she held so exalted an opinion of Jack's strength and courage that she refused to abandon hope. And the fact that he had confided to her his rash intention of running away and signing as a pirate sooner than be transported to school in England, persuaded her that he might be alive.