THE MIST OF THE CHEROKEE SWAMP
THE dark cloud of anxiety was lightened a trifle by the fact that
Blackbeard displayed no ill temper toward the two young castaways.
Having obtained such information as they chose to offer, he roughly told
them to go forward and join the crew. Whether or no, Jack was impressed
as a pirate and it may have amused Blackbeard to recruit by force the
nephew of the honorable Secretary of the Provincial Council. For his
part, Jack was grateful to be regarded no longer as a hostage under
sentence of death. With Joe as an escort who knew the ropes, he went on
deck and was promptly kicked off the poop by the mate.
They first found food and quenched their raging thirst with water which
had a loathsome smell. Joe reported to the chief gunner and begged the
chance to sleep for a dozen hours on end. This was granted amiably
enough and the pirates clustered about to ask all manner of curious
questions, but the weary lads dragged themselves into the bows of the
ship and curled up in a stupor. There they lay as if drugged, all
through the night, even when the seamen trampled over them to haul the
head-sails and tack ship.
When, at last, they blinked at the morning sky, it dismayed them to find
the breeze blowing strong out of the southeast and the _Revenge_
standing in to the coast under easy sail. They looked aft and saw
Blackbeard at the rail with a long glass at his eye. The whole crew was
eager with expectation and the routine work went undone. The ship had
been put about several hours earlier, Joe learned, and was due soon to
sight the shore unless the reckoning was all at fault.
So cleverly had Blackbeard calculated the drift of the boys' raft that a
little later in the morning a lookout in the maintop called down:
"Land, ho! Two points off the starboard bow she bears."
"The maintop, ahoy!" shouted Blackbeard. "Can ye see a vessel's spars?"
"'Tis too hazy inshore. But unless my eyes play me tricks, a smudge of
smoke arises."
Jack Cockrell nervously confided to Joe:
"That would be Captain Wellsby's campfire on the beach."
"Trust him to douse it," was the easy assurance. "I feel better. Blow
me, but I expect to live another day."
"Answer me why," begged Jack. "I am like a palsied old man."
"Well, you know this bit o' coast, how low it sets above the sea.
Despite the haze, a man aloft could see a ship's masts and yards before
he had a glimpse of land."
"Then the wreck of the _Plymouth Adventure_ has slid off the shoal and
gone down, Joe?"
"Yes, when the wind veered and stirred a surf on the shoal. She pounded
over with the flood-tide and dropped into fifteen fathom."
"Then we are saved, for now?" joyfully exclaimed Jack.
"Unless we're unlucky enough to find some o' those plaguey pirates
afloat on a raft or makin' signals from the beach."
The _Revenge_ sailed shoreward until those on board could discern the
marching lines of breakers which tumbled across the shoal. The smudge of
smoke had vanished from the beach. The lookout man concluded that the
haze had deceived him. Blackbeard steered as close as he dared go, with
a sailor heaving the lead, but there was no sign of life among the
sand-dunes and the stunted trees. And the _Plymouth Adventure_ had
disappeared leaving no trace excepting scattered bits of floating
wreckage.
The pirate ship headed to follow the coast to the northward, on the
chance that Ned Rackham's prize crew might have made a landing
elsewhere. To Jack Cockrell the gift of life had been miraculously
vouchsafed him and he felt secure for the moment. Joe's theory seemed
plausible, that the pirates had abandoned the _Plymouth Adventure_ in
time to avert drowning with her, and were driven away from the bight and
the beach by Captain Wellsby's well-armed sailors.
"Do they know Blackbeard's rendezvous in the North Carolina waters,
Joe?" was the natural query. "Are they likely to make their way thither,
knowing that honest men will slay them at sight?"
"The swamps and the murderous Indians will take full toll of 'em, Jack.
I believe we have seen the last of those rogues, but I'd rest better
could I know for certain."
"Meanwhile this mad Blackbeard may be taken in one of his savage
frenzies and shoot me for sport," said young Master Cockrell, for whom
existence had come to be one hazard after another.
"He seems strangely tame, much like a human soul," observed Joe. "I
ne'er beheld him like this. He plots some huge mischief, methinks."
And now the ship's officers drove the men to their work but they were
less abusive than usual. They seemed to reflect Blackbeard's milder
humor and it was manifest that they wished to avoid the crew's
resentment. Joe Hawkridge was puzzled and began to ferret it out among
his friends who were trustworthy. They had their own suspicions and the
general opinion was that Blackbeard was in great dread of encountering
Captain Stede Bonnet in the _Royal James_. It seemed that the _Revenge_
had spoken a disabled merchant ship just after the storm and her skipper
reported that he had been overhauled by Stede Bonnet a few days earlier
and the best of his cargo stolen. Blackbeard had been seized with
violent rage but had suffered the ship to proceed on her way because of
his own short-handed condition.
With a prize crew lost in the _Plymouth Adventure_, including
Sailing-Master Ned Rackham, and the two sloops of the squadron missing
with all hands, the terrible Blackbeard was in poor shape to meet this
Captain Bonnet who hated him beyond measure. As if this were not gloomy
enough, there were men in the _Revenge_ eager to sail under Bonnet's
flag and to mutiny if ever they sighted the _Royal James_. It behooved
Blackbeard to press on to that lonely inlet on the North Carolina coast
and avoid the open sea until he could prepare to fight this dangerous
foeman.
It surprised Jack Cockrell to see how quiet a pirate ship could be. The
ruffians were bone-weary, for one thing, after the struggle to bring the
vessel through the storm. And the scourge of tropic fever had left its
marks. Moreover, the rum was running short because some of the casks had
been staved in the heavy weather and Blackbeard was doling it out as
grog with an ample dilution of water. There was no more dicing and
brawling and tipsy choruses. Sobered against their will, some of these
bloody-minded sinners talked repentance or shed tears over wives and
children deserted in distant ports.
The wind blew fair until the _Revenge_ approached the landmarks familiar
to Blackbeard and found a channel which led to the wide mouth of
Cherokee Inlet. It was a quiet roadstead sheltered from seaward by
several small islands. The unpeopled swamp and forest fringed the shores
but a green meadow and a margin of white sand offered a favorable place
for landing. As the _Revenge_ slowly rounded the last wooded point, the
tall mast of a sloop became visible. The pirates cheered and discharged
their muskets in salute as they recognized one of the consorts which had
been blown away in the storm.
Blackbeard strutted on his quarter-deck, no longer biting his nails in
fretful anxiety. He had donned the military coat with the glittering
buttons and epaulets and the huge cocked hat with the feather in it. He
noted that the sloop, which was called the _Triumph_, fairly buzzed with
men, many more than her usual complement. No sooner had the ship let her
anchor splash than a boat was sent over to her with the captain of the
sloop who made haste to pay his compliments and explain his voyage. He
was a portly, sallow man with a blustering manner and looked more like a
bailiff or a tapster than a brine-pickled gentleman of fortune.
Blackbeard hailed him cordially and invited him into the cabin. The boat
waited alongside the _Revenge_ and the men scrambled aboard to swap
yarns with the ship's crew. Jack Cockrell hovered near the group as
they squatted on their heels around a tub of grog and learned that the
_Triumph_ had rescued the crew of the other sloop just before it had
foundered. There were a hundred men of them, in all, crowded together
like dried herring, and part were sleeping ashore in huts of boughs and
canvas. No wonder Blackbeard was in blither spirits. Here was a company
to pick and choose from and so fill the depleted berth-deck of the
_Revenge_.
Finding the poop deserted, Joe Hawkridge ventured far enough to peer in
at a cabin window. Blackbeard was at table, together with his first
mate, the chief gunner, the acting sailing-master, and the captain of
the sloop. They were exceeding noisy, singing most discordantly and
laughing at indecent jests. Suddenly Blackbeard whipped two pistols from
his sash and fired them under the table, quite at random.
The first mate leaped up with a horrible yell and clapped a hand to the
calf of his leg. Then he bolted out of the cabin, which was blue with
smoke, and limped in search of the surgeon. Joe Hawkridge dodged aside
but he heard the jovial Blackbeard shout, with a whoop of laughter:
"Discipline, damme! If I don't kill one of you now and then, you'll
forget who I am."
Inasmuch as none of the other guests dared squeak after this episode, it
was to be inferred that they were properly impressed.
[Illustration: THE FIRST MATE LEAPED UP WITH A HORRIBLE YELL]
In a little while the mate returned with his leg neatly bandaged,
announced that it was a mere flesh wound, and sat down as though nothing
out of the ordinary had occurred to mar the festive occasion. Through
the rest of the day, boats were passing between the ship and the sloop
in a convivial reunion. Supper was to be cooked on the beach in great
iron kettles and a frolic would follow the feast. The sloop had rum
enough to sluice all the parched gullets aboard the _Revenge_.
Jack Cockrell had no desire to join this stupid revel but he was eager
to get ashore to discover what opportunity there might be to escape. But
the wiser Joe Hawkridge counseled patience, saying:
"Wait a bit. We'd be as helpless as any babes should we take to our
heels in this ungodly wilderness. Is there a town or plantation near
by?"
"I know not," ruefully confessed Jack. "Charles Town lies to the south,
and Virginia to the north. There my knowledge fetches up short."
"And leagues of morass to flounder through, by the look of this coast,"
said Joe. "We be without weapons, or food, or----"
"I am a hot-headed fool, I grant you that," broke in Jack. "Now bestow
your sage advice."
"You will not be allowed to go ashore, for one thing, Master Cockrell.
Blackbeard has no notion of letting you get away from him to betray this
rendezvous and stir the colonies to send an expedition after him.
Steady the helm, Jack, and watch for squalls. If I can read the signs,
there is trouble afoot. And we must seek our own advantage in the nick
of time."
"But these wild sots no longer think of mutiny and the like, Joe. They
are content to let the morrow go hang."
"S-s-s-h, 'ware the master of the sloop," cautioned Joe. "He makes for
the gangway, the big lump of tallow."
They moved away while Captain Richard Spender clumsily descended into
his boat, his broad face flushed, his breath asthmatic. He had a piping
voice absurd for his bulk and the two lads amused themselves with
mimicking him as the boat pulled in the direction of the sloop. So safe
against surprise did Blackbeard regard himself in this lonely anchorage
that no more than a dozen men were left aboard to keep the ship through
the night. Among these was Jack Cockrell, as his comrade had foreseen.
It therefore happened that they remained together, for Joe had
volunteered to join the anchor watch. In a melancholy mood the two lads
idled upon the after deck.
The sun dropped behind the dark and tangled forest and flights of herons
came winging it home to the islets in the swamps. On the sward by the
silver strand the throng of pirates had stilled their clamor while a
rascal with a tenor voice held them enraptured with the haunting refrain
of:
"Sweet Annie frae the sea-beach came,
Where Jockey's climbed the vessel's side:
Ah! wha can keep her heart at hame,
When Jockey's tossed aboon the tide?
"Far off 'till distant realms he gangs,
But I'se be true, as he ha' been;
And when ilk lass around him thrangs,
He'll think on Annie's faithful een."
Forlorn Jack Cockrell had homesick thoughts and felt hopeless of loosing
the snares which bound him. All that sustained his courage was the
sanguine disposition of Joe Hawkridge, whose youthful soul had been so
battered and toughened by dangers manifold on land and sea that he
expected nothing less. Listening to the pirate's moving ballad, they sat
and swung their legs from the ship's taffrail while their gaze idly
roved to the green curtain of undergrowth which ran lush to the water's
edge to the northward of the beach.
It was Joe who called attention to a floating object which moved inside
the mouth of the small, tidal creek that wandered through the marshy
lowlands. In the shadowy light it could easily be mistaken for a log
drifting down on the ebb of the tide. This was what the lads assumed it
to be until they both noticed a behavior curious in a log. The long, low
object turned athwart the current at the entrance of the creek and shot
toward the nearest bank as though strongly propelled.
Joe lifted the telescope from its case in front of the wooden
binnacle-box and squinted long at the edge of the creek. Crude though
the glass was, he was enabled to discern that the object was, in truth,
a log, but evidently hollowed out. Rounded at the ends, it held two men
whose figures so blended into the dusk that they disclosed themselves
only when in motion.
"A pirogue," said Joe, "and fashioned by Indians! What is the tribe
hereabouts? Have ye a guess?"
"Roving Yemassees, or men of the Hatteras tribe," answered Jack. "Yonder
brace of savages will be scouts."
"Aye, but there'll be no attack 'gainst this pirates' bivouac, right
under the guns of the ships. The Indians are too wise to attempt it."
"Look, Joe! Hand me the glass. Those two spies have quitted the pirogue.
'Tis quite empty. They may lay up all night to creep closer and keep
watch on the camp."
"Right enough, by Crambo! If we could but gain yon cypress canoe, and
steal along the coast by sail and paddle----"
"'Tis the chance we prayed for," eagerly exclaimed Jack. "Dare we swim
for it?"
"Not with a boat just coming off from shore. What if we try it in the
night and find the pirogue gone?"
"We are stranded for sure, and Blackbeard will kill us."
Baffled, they strained their eyes until the shore stood black in the
starlight, but as long as the dusk lingered they fancied they could
descry the empty pirogue. The ship's boat which presently drew alongside
contained Blackbeard himself and Captain Dick Spender of the _Triumph_
sloop, besides several officers of the two vessels. They withdrew into
the cabin and there was prolonged discussion, lasting well toward
midnight.
It was a secretive session, with trusted men of the boat's crew posted
to keep eavesdroppers away from the hatches and windows, nor was there
any loud carousing. Some business was afoot and Jack wondered whether it
might concern the trouble which Joe had sworn was brewing under the
surface. A circumstance even more suspicious was that three of the
sailors from the boat were called into the cabin. Joe Hawkridge knew
them as fellows loyal to Blackbeard through thick and thin. Drunken
beasts, as a rule, they were cold sober to-night.
As quietly as they had come, the whole party dropped into the boat and
returned either to the beach or to the sloop which rode at anchor two
cable-lengths away. The _Revenge_ floated with no more activity on her
darkened decks. The few men of the watch drowsed at their stations or
wistfully gazed at the fires ashore and the mob of pirates who moved in
the red glare. Jack Cockrell and Joe Hawkridge felt no desire for sleep.
As the ship swung with the turn of the tide, they went to the side and
leaned on the tall bulwark where they might catch the first glimpse of
the shore with the break of day.
Meanwhile they busied themselves with this wild scheme and that. Sifting
them out, it was resolved to swim from the ship at the first
opportunity. If they could not find the Indian pirogue, Joe would try to
get into the pirates' camp by night and possess himself of an axe, an
adze, a musket or two, and such food as he could smuggle out. Then, at a
pinch, they could hide themselves a little way inland and hew out a
pirogue of their own from a dry log. After hitting upon this plan, the
better it seemed the more they thrashed it over.
Unluckily it occurred to them so late in the night that they feared to
attempt it then lest the dawn might overtake them while they were
swimming. 'Twas a great pity, said Joe, that their wits had hung fire,
like a damp flint-lock, for this was the night when the pirates would be
the most slack and befuddled and it would be precious hard waiting
through another day. Jack glumly agreed with this point of view.
It was so near morning, however, that they lingered to scan the shore.
Then it was observed that a pearly mist was rising from the swamp lands
and spreading out over the water. It was almost like a fog which the
morning breeze would dispel after a while. Rolling like smoke it hung so
low that the topmast of the sloop rose above it although her hull was
like the gray ghost of a vessel.
"No sign of wind as yet," said Joe, holding up a wetted finger, "and
that red sunset bespoke a calm, hot day. This odd smother o' mist may
stay a couple of hours. Will ye venture it with me, Jack?"
"Gladly! Over we go, before the watch is flogged awake by the bos'n's
mate."
They crept aft to the high stern and paid out a coil of rope until it
trailed in the water beneath the railed gallery which overhung the huge
rudder. Joe belayed his end securely and slid over like a flash,
twisting the rope around one leg and letting himself down as agile as a
monkey. Without a splash he cast himself loose and Jack followed but not
so adroitly. When he plopped into the water the commotion was like
tossing a barrel overboard, but nobody sounded an alarm.
They clung to the rusty rudder chains and listened. The ship was all
quiet. Then out into the mist they launched themselves, swimming almost
submerged, dreading to hear an outcry and the spatter of musket balls.
But the veiling mist and the uncertain light of dawn soon protected the
fugitives. It was slow, exhausting progress, hampered as they were by
their breeches and shoes which could not be discarded. They tried to
keep a sense of direction, striking out for the mouth of the creek in
which the pirogue had been moored, but the tide set them off the course
and the only visible marks were the spars of the ship behind them and
the sloop's topmast off to one side.
[Illustration: JACK ALMOST BUMPED INTO THE DUGOUT CANOE]
Jack swam more strongly and showed greater endurance because he had the
beef and had been better nourished all his life than the scrawny young
powder boy who was more like a lath. Now and then Jack paused to tread
water while his shipmate clung to his shoulder and husbanded his waning
strength, with that indomitable grin on his freckled phiz. Of one thing
they were thankful, that the tide was bearing them farther away from the
pirates' camp, which was now as still as though the sleepers were dead
men.
"Blood and bones, but I have swum a league a'ready," gurgled Joe during
one of the halts.
"Shut your mouth or you'll fill up to the hatch and founder," scolded
Jack. "I see trees in the mist. The shore is scarce a pistol shot away."
"I pray my keel scrapes soon," spluttered the waterlogged Hawkridge as
he kicked himself along in a final effort.
Huzza, their feet touched the soft ooze and they fell over stumps and
rotted trunks buried under the surface. Scratched and beplastered with
mud, they crawled out in muck which gripped them to the knees, and
roosted like buzzards upon the butt of a prostrate live-oak.
"Marooned," quoth Joe, "to be eaten by snakes and alligators."
"Nonsense," snapped Master Cockrell, who had hunted deer and wild-fowl
on the Carolina coast. "We can pick our way with care. I have seen
pleasanter landscapes than this, but I like it better than Blackbeard's
company."
There was no disputing this statement and Joe plucked up spirit, as was
his habit when another arduous task confronted him. Cautiously they made
their way from one quaking patch of sedge to another or scrambled to
their middles. There came a ridge of higher ground thick with brambles
and knotted vines and they traversed this with less misery. A gleam of
water among the trees and they took it to be the creek which they sought
to find. Wary of lurking Indians, they wormed along on their stomachs
and so came to the high swamp grass of the bank.
They swam the creek and crept toward its mouth. Jack was rooting along
like a bear when he almost bumped into the dugout canoe which had looked
so very like a stranded log. It was tied to a tree by a line of twisted
fibre and the rising tide had borne it well up into the marsh. Here it
was invisible from the ship and only a miracle of good fortune had
revealed it to the lads in that glimpse from the deck at sundown.
They crawled over the gunwale and slumped in the bottom of the pirogue,
which was larger than they expected, a clumsy yet seaworthy craft with a
wide floor and space to crowd a dozen men. Fire had helped to hollow it
from a giant of a cypress log, for the inner skin was charred black.
Three roughly made paddles were discovered. This was tremendously
important, and all they lacked was a mast and sail to be true
navigators.
Something else they presently found which was so unlooked for, so
incredible, that they could only gape and stare at each other. Tucked in
the bow was a seaman's jacket of tarred canvas, of the kind used in wet
weather. Sewed to the inside of it was a pocket of leather with a
buttoned flap. This Jack Cockrell proceeded to explore, recovering from
his stupefaction, and fished out a wallet bound in sharkskin as was the
habit of sailors to make for themselves in tropic waters. It contained
nothing of value, a few scraps of paper stitched together, a bit of
coral, a lock of yellow hair, a Spanish coin, some shreds of dried
tobacco leaf.
Carefully Jack examined the ragged sheets of paper which seemed to be a
carelessly jotted diary of dates and events. Upon the last leaf was
scrawled, "_Bill Saxby, His Share_," and beneath this entry such items
as these:
"Aprl. ye 17--A Spanish shippe rich laden. 1 sack
Vanilla. 2 Rolls Blue Cloth of Peru. 1 Packet
Bezoar Stones.
"May ye 24--A Poor Shippe. 3 Bars of Silver. 1
Case Cordial Waters. A Golden Candle-stick. My
share by Lot afore ye Mast."
Joe Hawkridge could neither read nor write but he had ready knowledge
of the meaning of these entries and he cried excitedly:
"Say the name again, Jack. Bill Saxby, His Share. Strike me blind, but I
was chums with Bill when we lay off Honduras. As decent a lad as ever
went a-piratin'! A heart of oak is Bill, hailin' from London town."
"But what of the riddle?" impatiently demanded Jack. "Whence this Indian
pirogue? And where is Bill Saxby?"
"He sailed with Stede Bonnet, bless ye," answered Joe. "These two men we
spied in the canoe last night were no Indians. _They were Cap'n Bonnet's
men._ Indians would ha' hid the pirogue more craftily."
"But they came not along the coast. Did they drop down this creek from
somewhere inland?"
"There you put me in stays," confessed Joe. "One thing I can swear. They
were sent to look for Blackbeard's ships. And I sore mistrust they were
caught whilst prowling near the camp. Else they would ha' come back to
the canoe before day."