AN EXPEDITION
BLACKBEARD had been away from home for some days in Bath Town—a longer
stay than he commonly made. Meantime Jack was the only hale man left
about the place. He and Dred had been turned out of their beds to make
way for Hands, who had been brought ashore to the house from the sloop
when he was shot through the leg. That had been four or five weeks
before, and since then Jack and Dred had slept in the kitchen. It was
very hard upon Dred, who was weak and sick with the fever.
Then one morning the pirate captain suddenly returned from the town.
Jack and Betty Teach were at breakfast in the kitchen, and Dred lay
upon a bench, his head upon a coat rolled into a pillow.
“You’d better come and try to eat something,” said Betty Teach. “I do
believe if you try to eat a bit you could eat, and to my mind you’d
be the better for it.” Dred shook his head weakly without opening his
eyes. Jack helped himself to a piece of bacon and a large yellow yam.
“Now, do come and eat a bit,” urged the woman.
“I don’t want anything to eat,” said Dred, irritably. “I wish you’d let
me alone.” He opened his eyes for a brief moment and then closed them
again.
“Well,” said Betty, “you needn’t snap a body’s head off. I only ask
you to eat for your own good—if you don’t choose to eat, why, don’t
eat. You’ll be as testy as Hands by and by—and to be sure, I never saw
anybody like he is with his sore leg. You’d think he was the only man
in the world who had ever been shot, the way he do go on.”
“‘Twas a pretty bad hurt,” said Jack, with his mouth full, “and that’s
the truth. ’Tis a wonder to me how he did not lose his leg. ’Tis an
awful-looking place.” Dred listened with his eyes closed.
Just then the door opened and the captain came in, and then they ceased
speaking. He looked very glum and preoccupied. Dred opened his eyes
where he lay and looked heavily at him. The captain did not notice any
of the three, but went to the row of pegs against the wall and hung up
his hat, and then picked up a chair and brought it over to the table.
“Have you had your breakfast yet, Ned?” his wife asked.
“No,” he said, briefly. He sat quite impassively as she bustlingly
fetched him a plate and a knife and fork. “Where’s the case bottle?” he
asked, without looking up.
“I’ll fetch it to you,” she said, and she hurried to the closet and
brought out the squat bottle and set it beside him. He poured out a
large dram for himself and then turned suddenly to Dred.
“Chris,” he said, “I got some news from Charleston last night. Jim
Johnson’s come on, and he says that a packet to Boston in Massachusetts
was about starting three or four days after he left. There’s a big
prize in it, I do believe, and I’ve sent word down to the meet that we
are to be off as soon as may be. I’m going to run down to-night.”
Jack sat listening intently. He did not quite understand what was
meant, and he was very much interested to comprehend. He could gather
that the pirate was going away, seemingly on an expedition of some
sort, and he began wondering if he was to be taken along. Again Dred
had opened his eyes and was lying looking at the pirate captain,
who, upon his part, regarded the sick man for a steadfast moment or
two without speaking. “D’ye think ye can go along?” said Blackbeard
presently.
“Why, no,” said Dred weakly, “you may see for yourself that I can’t go
along. How could I go along? Why, I be a bedrid man.”
The captain stared almost angrily at him. “I believe you could go
along,” said he, “if you’d have the spirit to try. Ye lie here all day
till you get that full of the vapors that I don’t believe you’ll ever
be fit to get up at all. Don’t you think you could try?” Dred shook his
head. “D’ye mean to say that you won’t even make a try to go along?
D’ye mean that because you’re a little bit sick you choose to give up
your share in the venture that’ll maybe make the fortune of us all?”
“I can’t help it,” said Dred, and then he groaned. “You may see for
yourself that I’m not fit for anything. I wouldn’t do any good, and
’twould only cripple you to have a sick man aboard.”
“But how am I to get along without you?” said Blackbeard, savagely,
“that’s what I want to know. There’s Hands in bed with his broken knee,
and you down with the fever, and only Morton and me to run everything
aboard the two sloops. For they do say that the packet’s armed and
we’ll have to take both sloops.”
Jack had listened with a keener and keener interest. He felt that he
must know just what all the talk meant. “Where are you going, captain?”
he said. “What are you going to do?”
The pirate turned a lowering look upon him. “You mind your own business
and don’t you concern youself with what don’t concern you,” he said.
Then he added, “Wherever we’re going, you’re not going along, and you
may rest certain of that. You’ve got to stay at home here with Betty,
for she can’t get along with the girl and two sick men to look after.”
“He means he’s going on a cruise, Jack,” said Dred from the bench.
“They’re going to cruise outside to stop the Charleston packet.”
“I don’t see,” said Jack to the pirate captain, “that I’m any better
off here than I was up in Virginia. I had to serve Mr. Parker there and
I have to slave for you here without getting anything for it.”
Blackbeard glowered heavily at him for a few moments without speaking.
“If ye like,” he said, “I’ll send ye back to Virginia to your master.
I dare say he’d be glad enough to get you back again.” And then Jack
did not venture to say anything more. “Somebody’ll have to stay to look
after all these sick people,” Blackbeard continued, “and why not you as
well as another?”
The pirate’s wife had left the table and was busy getting some food
together on a pewter platter. “You take this up-stairs to the young
lady, Jack,” she said, “while I get something for Hands to eat. I never
see such trouble in all my life as the three of ‘em make together—the
young lady, and Hands, and Chris Dred here.”
“When d’ye sail!” Dred asked of the pirate captain, and Jack lingered,
with the plate in his hand, to hear the answer.
“Why, just as soon as we can get the men together. The longer we leave
it the less chance we’ll have of coming across the packet.” Jack waited
a little while longer, but Blackbeard had fallen to at his breakfast,
and he saw that no more was to be said just then, so he went up-stairs
with the food, his feet clattering noisily as he ascended the dark,
narrow stairway.
The young lady was sitting by the window, leaning her elbow upon the
sill. Jack set the platter of food upon the table and laid the iron
knife and two-pronged fork beside it. She had by this time become well
acquainted with him and the other members of the pirate’s household.
She would often come down-stairs when Blackbeard was away from home,
and would sit in the kitchen talking with them, sometimes even laughing
at what was said, and, for the time, appearing almost cheerful in spite
of her captivity. Several times Jack and Betty Teach had taken her for
a walk of an evening down the shore and even around the point in the
direction of Trivett’s plantation house. She looked toward him now as
he entered and then turned listlessly to the window again. She was very
thin and white, and she wore an air of dejection that was now become
habitual with her. “Do you know whether they have heard anything from
Virginia to-day?” she asked.
“I don’t believe they have,” said Jack. “At least I didn’t hear Captain
Teach say anything of the sort. Maybe by the time he comes back
there’ll be a letter.”
“Comes back? Is he, then, going away?”
“Ay,” said Jack. “He’s going off on an expedition that’ll maybe take
him two or three weeks.”
“An expedition?” she said. She looked at Jack as though wondering what
he meant, but she did not inquire any further. “A matter of two or
three weeks,” she repeated, almost despairingly. “I suppose, then, if
a letter should come I would have to wait all that time until Captain
Teach comes back again?”
“And cannot you, then, have patience to wait for a week or so, who have
been here now a month?” said Jack.
Just then came the sound of the pirate captain’s heavy tread ascending
the stairs.
“There he is, now,” said Jack, “and I’ve got to go.”
“Won’t you ask him if he’s heard anything from Virginia yet?”
“Why, mistress, it won’t be of any use for me to ask him; he won’t give
me any satisfaction,” said Jack; and then he added,—“but I will if you
want me to.”
Blackbeard went along the low, dark passageway and into the room where
Hands lay, and Jack followed him. “Phew!” said the pirate captain,
and he went across the room and opened the window. Hands, unconscious
of the heavy, fetid smell of the sick-room, was sitting propped up in
bed with a pillow, smoking a pipe of tobacco. He was very restless and
uneasy, and had evidently heard some words of the pirate’s talk with
Dred down-stairs. “Well, what’s ado now?” he asked.
“Why,” said Blackbeard, “we’re off on a cruise.”
“Off on a cruise?” said Hands.
“Yes,” said Blackbeard, as he sat himself down on the edge of the bed,
“I was up in town last night when Jim Johnson came up. He’d just come
back from Charleston and brought news of the Boston packet sailing. He
says it was the talk there that there was a chist o’ money aboard.”
Hands laid aside his pipe of tobacco and began swearing with all his
might. “What did ye mean, anyway,” he said, “to shoot me wantonly
through the knee?” He tried to move himself in the bed. “M-m-m!” he
grunted, groaning. He clenched the fist upon which he rested, making a
wry face as he shifted himself a little on the bed.
The pirate captain watched him curiously as he labored to move himself.
“How do you feel to-day?” he asked.
“Oh! I feel pretty well,” said Hands, groaning, “only when I try to
move a bit. I reckon I’ll never be able to use my leg agin to speak
on.”
Betty Teach came in with a platter of food. “What ha’ ye got there?”
asked the sick man, craning his neck.
“A bit of pork and some potatoes,” she said.
“Potatoes and pork,” he growled. “’Tis always potatoes and pork, and
nothing else.” She made no reply, but set the platter down upon the bed
and stood watching him. “When do you sail?” asked Hands.
“As soon as we can,” said Blackbeard, briefly.
“The young lady wants to know if you’ve heard anything yet from
Virginia,” said Jack.
The pirate looked scowlingly at him. “I’ll tell her when I hear
anything,” he said shortly.
Blackbeard ate his dinner ashore, and it was some time afternoon before
the sloop was ready to sail. Some half-dozen men had come up, during
the morning, in a rowboat from somewhere down the sound. They had
hoisted sail aboard the sloop, and now all was ready for departure.
The clouds had blown away, and the autumn sun shone warm and strong.
Dred had come down from the house to see the departure, and by and
by Blackbeard appeared, carrying the guitar, which he handed very
carefully into the boat before he himself stepped down into it. Dred
and Jack stood on the edge of the landing, watching the rowboat as
it pulled away from the wharf toward the sloop, the captain sitting
in the stern. Two or three men were already hoisting the anchor, the
click-clicking of the capstan sounding sharply across the water. The
long gun in the bows pointed out ahead silently and grimly. Presently
the small boat was alongside the sloop, and the captain scrambled
over the rail, the others following. Still Jack and Dred stood on the
end of the wharf, watching the sloop as the bow came slowly around.
Then, the sail filling with the wind, it heeled heavily over, and with
gathering speed swept sluggishly away from its moorings, leaving behind
it a swelling wake, in which towed the yawl boat that had brought
the captain aboard. They watched it as it ran further and further out
into the river, growing smaller and smaller in the distance, and then,
when a great way off, coming about again. They watched it until, with
the wind now astern, it slipped swiftly in behind the jutting point of
swamp and was cut off by the intervening trees. The two stood inertly
for a while in the strange silence that seemed to fall upon everything
after all the bustle of the departure. The water lapped and splashed
and gurgled against the wharf, and a flock of blue jays from the wet
swamp on the other side of the creek begun suddenly screaming out their
noisy, strident clamor. Presently Dred groaned. “I’m going back to the
house,” he said. “I ain’t fit to be out, and that’s a fact. I never had
a fever to lay me out like this. I’m going up to the house, and I ain’t
going to come out ag’in till I’m fit to be out.”