Historic Events of Colonial Days

by Rupert Sargent Holland

"Those lads have got grit to stick to their guns!" cried Park, keeping his smack bobbing on the waves at a safe distance. "They're using their muskets, too!" Antony cheered every time shots blazed from the Henry and held his breath to see what damage the answering fire of the pirate did to his own townsmen.

The other Charles Town sloop, the Sea Nymph, was aground too far down-stream to be of any help to her mate. Her crew, like the crew of three in the fishing-smack, could only watch from a distance, and cheer as the battle was waged back and forth.

And waged back and forth it was for a long time, while men were shot down at the guns, and parts of each ship shot away, and the sea scattered with wreckage, and the air filled with smoke and the heavy, acrid odor of powder. "The pirate's getting the best of it," shouted Simeon Park, after some time of fighting. It looked that way; her crew were yelling exultantly, and her captain had called to the sloop, demanding that the latter's crew haul down their flag in surrender.

At length, however, the tide began to turn, and with it the chance of victory for the pirates. The Henry floated from the shoal first, and her captain prepared to grapple with his enemy and board her. Then the Sea Nymph floated, and headed up to aid her consort. The pirate chief, seeing the chances now two to one against him, yelled to his crew to fight harder than ever; and the Royal James blazed again and again with broadsides, making a desperate stand, like a wild animal brought to bay. The rail of the Henry was carried overboard, and to the three in the fishing-smack it looked as if some of the crew had gone over with it.

Antony forgot the sea-fight; he was calling directions to Park to steer his boat so as to near the wreckage. He saw a man with his arm thrown over a piece of the railing, and he called encouragement to him. The fisherman sent his boat dashing ahead, and the man in the water, hearing Antony's voice, tried to swim in his direction. "Easy now!" cried the boy, and the boat swept up to the wreckage, and lay there, with loosely flapping sail, while Antony and Nick leaned far over her side and drew the man on board. They laid him on the deck, while Park, at the tiller, brought his boat about and scurried away from the line of fire.

The man was not badly hurt; he had a flesh wound in one shoulder, and was dazed from having been flung into the sea with the railing. "Never mind me," he said. "Look for others." The three looked over the water, but though they saw plenty of floating wreckage, they spied no other men.

"She's striking her flag!" cried Park. They all looked at the fighting ships, and saw that the pirate had hauled down his flag, and heard the cheers of victory from the Henry and the Sea Nymph. Antony jumped up and down and yelled with the best of them; the men of Charles Town were having their revenge on the sea-rovers who had so openly flouted them a short time before.

"That's the end of Blackbeard!" cried the wounded man, sitting up and watching the crews of the two sloops as they prepared to board the other vessel.

Nick shook his head. "Not Blackbeard," he said. "Whoever that rover may be, he's not old Teach, I know."