II

Five days Antony stayed on board the pirate ship, while Blackbeard

doctored the sick men of his crew with the medicines he had obtained in

Charles Town. The boy was well treated, for it was understood that he

was under Nick's protection, and moreover, although the pirates could

show their teeth and snarl savagely enough in a fight, they were

friendly and easy-going among themselves. It was a pleasant cruise for

Antony, for the weather held good, and Nick taught him much about the

handling of a ship. Then, after five days of sailing, Blackbeard

anchored off one of the long sandy islands that dot that coast, and

those of his men who were tired of their small quarters on the ship went

ashore and spent the night there. Among them were Nick and Antony, and,

as on that other night ashore, they made their beds at a little distance

from the others.

Just before dawn Antony was waked by some one pulling his shoulder. It

was Nick, who signaled to him that he should rise noiselessly and follow

him. The boy obeyed, and the two went silently through the woods and

came out on another beach as the sun was rising. They walked for some

time, watching the wonderful colors the sun was sending over sea and

sky. Then said Nick, "We're far enough away from them now. They won't

hunt for us; they've more than enough crew, and old Teach ain't the man

to bother his head about a couple of runaways. Five minutes of curses,

and he'll be up and away again, with never a thought of us. I'll beat

you to the water, Tony," and Nick started to pull his shirt over his

head.

They swam as long as they wanted, and then they followed the shore,

growing more and more hungry as they went along. "There must be

fishermen somewhere," said Nick. "A little farther south, and we'd have

fruit for the taking; but here"--he shrugged his shoulders--"nothing but

a few berries that rattle around in one like peas in a pail."

After an hour, however, they came to a fisherman's shanty, and found the

owner working with his nets and lines on the shore. He was a big man,

with reddish hair and beard, and clothes that had been so often soaked

in salt water that they had almost all the colors of the rainbow. "We'll

work all day for food and drink," said Nick, grinning.

The fisherman grinned in return. "Help yourselves," said he, waving his

hand toward his shanty. "You're welcome to what you find; I got my gold

and silver safe hid away."

They found dried fish and corn-meal cakes and water in an earthen jar.

When they came out to the beach again they told the man their names, and

learned in turn that his was Simeon Park. They went out with him in his

sailing-smack, and fished all day, and when they came back they felt

like old friends, as men do who spend a day together on the sea.

There followed a week of fishing with Simeon, varied by mornings when

they went hunting ducks and wild turkeys and geese with him over the

marshes and the long flats that lay along the coast. Antony had never

had a better time; he liked both of his new friends, and, except for his

father and mother, he was in no hurry to go back to Charles Town and

work in the warehouse there. At the end of the week Simeon Park

suggested that they should take the smack for a cruise, fishing and

gunning as chance offered. So they put to sea again, this time in a much

smaller vessel than Blackbeard's merchantman.

They met with one small gale, but after that came favoring winds.

Presently they found themselves near Charles Town harbor again. They

camped on shore one night, and Antony told Nick that he must be heading

for home shortly.

Next morning the boy was waked by the big fisherman, who pointed out to

sea. Three big ships were standing off the coast, and even at that

distance they could see that the "Jolly Roger" of a pirate, the skull

and crossbones, flew from the masthead of the biggest vessel. Guns

boomed across the water. "The two sloops are after the big fellow,"

exclaimed Simeon Park. "Let's put out in our boat, and have a look at

the game."

They put off in their smack, and with the skilful fisherman at the helm,

stood off and on, tacked and ran before the wind, until they came to a

point where they were out of shot and yet near enough to see all that

was taking place.

"I can read the names of the sloops," said Park, squinting across at

their sterns; "one's called _Sea Nymph_ and t'other the _Henry_, and

they both hail from Charles Town."

Nick chuckled. "That governor of yours," he said to Antony, "didn't lose

much time. He's got two sloops of war now for certain, and he means to

try a tussle with the rovers." He too squinted at the vessels. "I don't

think she's Blackbeard's, howsomever. No, there's her name." And he

spelled out the words _Royal James_.

The two sloops, each mounting eight guns, had swept down on the pirate,

evidently planning to catch her in a narrow strait formed by two spits

of land. But the pirate ship, undaunted, had sought to sail past the

sloops, and by her greater speed to gain the open sea. Then the two

sloops bore in close, and before the _Royal James_ knew what she was

about she had sailed out of the channel and was stuck fast on a shoal of

sand. Then the _Henry_, too, grounded in shoal water, and some distance

further, her mate, the _Sea Nymph_.

This was a pretty situation, all three ships aground, and only the

little fishing-smack able to sail about as she liked. "Lucky we don't

draw more'n a couple of feet of water," said Simeon Park, at the helm.

"If we only had a gun of our own aboard we could hop about and pepper

first one, then t'other."

"And have one good round shot send us to the bottom as easy as a man

crushes a pesky mosquito," observed Nick. "No, thankee. If it's all the

same to you I'd rather keep out of gun-fire of both sides to this little

controversy."

Antony, crouched on the small deck forward, was too busy watching what

was going on to consider the likelihood of his boat going aground.

The tide was at the ebb, and there was no likelihood of any of the three

fighting-ships getting off the shoals for hours. The _Royal James_ and

the _Henry_ had listed the same way, and now lay almost in line with

each other, so that the hull of the pirate ship was turned directly

toward the Charles Town sloop, while the deck of the latter was in full

view of the pirate, and only a pistol-shot away.

"They're more like two forts now than ships," said Nick. "There she

goes!"

Antony was yelling. The _Henry_ had opened fire on the pirate ship. But

instantly the _Royal James_ returned the fire with a broadside, which,

on account of its position, raked the open deck of the _Henry_.

"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."

The gun-smoke drifted away across the water, and Park, at Nick's

suggestion, headed his boat for shore. The dark man had no wish to sail

up to the sloops from Charles Town just then, thinking it not unlikely

that some of the crew might remember him as Blackbeard's agent at the

Charles Town dock. So they skirted the shore till they reached a good

landing-place. There they camped, binding the sailor's wounded shoulder

as best they could, cooking dinner, for they were all ravenously hungry,

and resting on the sand. There the sailor, Peter Duval, told them how

angry Governor Johnson and the men of Charles Town had been when

Blackbeard had sailed away with his medicines, leaving Samuel Wragg and

the others, plundered and almost stripped, to find their way home; and

how Colonel Rhett had sworn that with two sloops he would rid the sea of

the pirate, and had sailed forth to do it. In return Antony told the

sailor who he was and they planned that in a day or two they would

return home. "And Nick there is going back with me," added Antony,

nodding toward the dark young fellow who sat on the beach with them.

Now Duval had heard how Blackbeard or some of his men had kidnapped the

son of Jonas Evans, and he had his own suspicions concerning what manner

of man this dark-haired fellow might be. Yet he could not help liking

the man, who had certainly helped to do him a good turn; and even if he

had been a pirate there was no reason why he shouldn't have changed his

mind about that way of living and have decided to become an honest

citizen. So he nodded his head approvingly, and said, "That's good. The

old town needs some likely-looking men," and shifted about so that the

warm sand made a more comfortable pillow for his wounded shoulder.

Next day they sailed back to Simeon Park's cabin, and there Nick

discovered a pair of shears and cut his black mustache and cropped his

hair close, so that he looked more like one of the English Roundheads

than he did like a sea-rover. "Now, mates," said he to Antony and Duval,

"I'm a wandering trader you happened to meet in the woods. Tony stole

away from Blackbeard's men one night, and found Park's cabin here. Then

I came along, and a day or two later the three of us picked Duval out of

the sea. What d'ye say to that, mates?"

"I say," said Duval, winking, "that with the lad and me to speak up for

you, they'll be glad to have you in Charles Town, whatever you may be."

He added sagely, "Folks aren't over particular in the colonies about

your granddaddy. Many of 'em came over from the old country without

questions asked as to why they came. No, sir; if a man deals square by

us, we deal square by him."

The following afternoon Simeon Park's boat tacked across the bay, and

zigzagged up to the Charles Town docks. At sundown his three passengers

landed, and bade him a hearty farewell. Few people were about, and none,

as it chanced, who knew them, so that the three walked straightway up

the street along the harbor, Nick in the middle, looking as innocent as

if he had never seen the town before.

The Evans family lived in a small frame house on Meeting Street, and

husband and wife were just sitting down to supper when there came a

knock at the street door. Jonas Evans opened the door, and his son

sprang in and caught him around the shoulders. "Here I am, dad!" he

cried. "Safe and sound again!" After that bear-like squeeze he rushed to

his mother, and gave her the same greeting, while she exclaimed, and

kissed him again and again, and called him all her pet names.

"And I've brought a friend home with me, Nicholas Carter," said Antony.

"I met him along the coast, and he's been very good to me, so you must

be good to him. He's a splendid fellow," he added loyally. "And he and a

fisherman and I pulled Peter Duval out of the water after the big

sea-fight the other day."

"Any friend of my boy's is my friend," said Mr. Evans, and he caught

Nick by the hand and drew him into the house. Then he shook hands with

Duval, and so did Mrs. Evans, almost crying in her delight at having her

son home again, and they both urged the sailor to stay and have supper

with them, but he said that now that he had seen his two mates safely

home he must dash away to his own family.

Antony and Nick sat at the supper-table and ate their fill while Jonas

Evans told them the news. Colonel Rhett had sailed out from Charles Town

with his two sloops and after a great battle had captured the pirate

ship. He thought he had captured Blackbeard, but found he was mistaken.

The pirate had turned out to be a man named Stede Bonnet, a man who came

of a good family and owned some property, a gentleman one might say, a

man who had been a major in the army, and a worthy citizen of

Bridgetown. Once he had repented of his pirate's life, and taken the

King's pardon, but he had gone back to his lawless trade, and been one

of the fiercest of his kind. No one in Charles Town could understand why

such a man had a liking for such a business. Mr. Evans supposed that it

must be because of the wild adventures that went with the career of the

sea-rovers. Here Antony caught a smile on Nick's face, and knew that his

friend was thinking there were many reasons why respectable fellows

turned outlaws. Some drifted into it, as Nick had done as a boy, and

found it easier to stay in than to leave.

Colonel Rhett, Jonas Evans added, had returned to Charles Town with the

_Royal James_ as a prize, and with Stede Bonnet and thirty of his crew

in irons. Eighteen of the men of Carolina had been killed in the

sea-fight, and many more badly wounded.

Then, when he could eat no more, Antony told his story. "And I hope,

dad," he finished, "that you can find a place for Nick in the warehouse.

And on Sundays," he added to his friend, "we'll get out on the water,

and go gunning and fishing."

"Any honest work," said Nick, with his familiar smile, "till I can get

my bearings, and see what I'm best fitted for." He thought he might

endure the warehouse for a week or so, but already he felt the call to

the old free life of the rover.

Jonas Evans agreed to try to find a place for his son's friend. They

talked till the tallow dips sputtered and went out, and then Nick and

Antony climbed to their two bedrooms up under the eaves. "It's the first

time I've slept in a house for years, Tony," said Nick. "I don't know

how I'll like it."

He found that he liked it very well, and the ex-pirate slept

comfortably under the roof of the respectable Charles Town merchant.