"Ned Rackham took the others away in the snow, as I tell ye, Cap'n Bonnet, and there was I in the doleful dumps. Prayers get answered and miracles do happen, for next day there come a-floatin' to the beach a cask full of grub and water. Good Peter Tobey, the carpenter's mate, had a hand in launchin' it, no doubt, but the Lord hisself steered the blessed cask. Well, while I set a-giving thanks and thinkin' one thing an' another, I figgered that when I'd ate all the grub and swigged the water, I was no further along."
"And so you thought you would trust the Lord again," suggested Captain Bonnet.
"Aye, sir, that was it. By watchin' the tides I reckoned I might drift to another island and so work to the coast, taking my provisions with me. There was some small line in the cask that Peter Tobey had wrapped the stores in, and I knotted a harness about the cask that I could slip an arm in, and off I goes when the tide sets right. But some kind of a dratted cross-current ketched me and I'm sailin' out to sea, I finds, without compass or cross-staff. Bound to get to London River, eh, Jack, same as we started out on the silly little raft."
"Whew, this adventure was bad enough," cried Jack, "but when you saw Ned Rackham's pirates in the boat, and you couldn't run away,—I wonder, honest, Joe, you didn't die of fright."
"What for? This is no trade for a nervous wight. And now for a bloody frolic with Blackbeard's bullies."
"There is a share of his treasure for you, Joe, as soon as we can go find it," gleefully announced Master Cockrell. "I have the chart drawn all true with mine own hand. Let me get it."
While the two lads pored entranced over the map of the branching creek and the pine-covered knoll, the crew of the Royal James were overhauling weapons and clearing the ship for action. It disappointed them to lack the twenty men whom they had expected to find marooned but this made them no less eager for battle. Concerning Ned Rackham, there was no feud with him or grudge to square and he could go his way in the little trading snow without fear of molestation from Stede Bonnet.
Under cover of night the Royal James worked back to the sandy islands and anchored in the channel. One of her boats had ventured within sight of the Inlet for a stealthy reconnaissance and reported that the Revenge was still in the harbor. Captain Bonnet was considering his plan of attack. He said nothing about it to Jack Cockrell and his chum, the merman, and they greedily listened to the gossip of the petty officers or thrashed out theories of their own.
To sail boldly into the harbor was a ticklish risk to run as there was no pilot aboard who knew the inner channel and the depths of water. All the gunners were in favor of attempting it because they yearned to settle it with crashing broadsides. But the battered, hairy sea-dogs who had fought it out in hand-to-hand conflicts on the Caribbean were for leaving the brig in safe water and sending fifty men in boats to board the Revenge at the first break of day.
In the midst of the fo'castle argument, Captain Bonnet sent for Jack Cockrell and told him: