CHAPTER III
HELD AS HOSTAGES TO BLACKBEARD
TO discover the pestilent Blackbeard in Carolina waters was like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. Captain Wellsby had felt confident that he could beat off the ordinary pirate craft which was apt to be smaller than his own stout ship. And most of these unsavory gentry were mere salt-water burglars who had little taste for hard fighting. The master of the Plymouth Adventure, so pious and sedate, was a brave man to whom the thought of surrender was intolerable. From what he knew of Blackbeard, it was useless to try to parley for the lives of his passengers. Better it was to answer with double-shotted guns than to beg for mercy.
The British tars, stripped to the waist, turned anxious eyes to the skipper upon the quarter-deck while they quaffed pannikins of rum and water and cracked many a rough jest. They fancied death no more than other men, but seafaring was a perilous trade and they were toughened to its hazards. They were facing hopeless odds but let the master shout the command and they would send the souls of some of these pirates sizzling down to hell before the Plymouth Adventure sank, a splintered hulk, in the smoke of her own gunpowder.
Captain Wellsby delayed his decision a moment longer. Something most unusual had attracted his attention. A ball of smoke puffed from a port of Blackbeard's ship, but the round shot splashed beyond the bowsprit of the Plymouth Adventure instead of thudding into her oaken side. This was a signal to heave to. It was a courtesy both unexpected and perplexing, because Blackbeard's habit was to let fly with all the guns that could bear as the summons to submit. Presently a dingy bit of cloth fluttered just beneath the black flag. It looked like the remains of a pirate's shirt which had once been white.
"A signal for a truce?" muttered Captain Wellsby. "A ruse, mayhap, but the rogue has no need to resort to trickery."
The two sloops of Blackbeard's squadron, spreading tall, square topsails, came driving down to windward in readiness to fire their bow-chasers and form in line of battle. The passengers of the Plymouth Adventure, snatching at the chance of safety, implored the skipper to send his men away from the guns lest a rash shot might be their ruin. They prayed him to respect the precious flag of truce and to ascertain the meaning of it. Mystified and wavering in his purpose, he told the mates to back the main-yard and heave the ship to.
Upon his own deck Blackbeard was stamping to and fro, bellowing at his crew while he flourished a broadsword by way of emphasis. The hapless company of the Plymouth Adventure shivered at the very sight of him and yet there was something almost ludicrous in the antics of this atrocious pirate, as though he were play-acting upon the stage of a theatre. He had tucked up the tails of his military coat because the wind whipped them about his bandy legs and made him stumble. The flowing whiskers also proved bothersome, wherefore he looped them back over his ears by means of the bows of crimson ribbon. This seemed to be his personal fashion of clearing for action.
"There be pirates and pirates," critically observed Mr. Peter Forbes as he stared at the unpleasant Blackbeard. "This is a filthy beast, Jack, and he was badly brought up. He has no manners whatever."