THE GREAT FIGHT OF CAPTAIN TEACH
YES, there was Blackbeard's ship hard in the sand which had gripped her
keel while she was steering to enter the Cherokee Inlet. There was no
pearly vapor of swamp mist out here to shroud her from attack. The air
was clear and bright, with a robust breeze which stirred a flashing surf
on the shoals. Under lower sails, the two sloops watchfully crept nearer
until their crews could examine the stranded brig and read the story of
her plight. She stood on a slant with the decks sloped toward the enemy.
This made it impossible to use her guns with any great effect.
Captain Wellsby tacked ship and kept the _King George_ well away from
the cay, as Joe Hawkridge advised. With an ebbing tide, it was unsafe to
venture into shallower water in order to pound Blackbeard's vessel with
broadsides. Lieutenant Maynard came aboard in a small boat and was quite
the dandy with his brocaded coat and ruffles and velvet small-clothes.
One might have thought he had engaged to dance the minuet. Colonel
Stuart met him in a spick-and-span uniform of His Majesty's Foot,
cross-belts pipe-clayed white as snow, boots polished until they shone.
Such gentlemen were punctilious in war two hundred years ago.
"Your solid shot will not pound him much at this range, my good sir,"
said the lieutenant. "With his hull so badly listed toward us, you can
no more than splinter the decks while his men take shelter below."
"I grant you that," regretfully replied the soldier. "And case-shot will
not scatter to do him much harm. Shall I blaze away and demoralize the
rascals whilst you make ready your boats?"
"Toss a few rounds into the varlets, Colonel Stuart. It may keep them
from massing on deck. One boat from your ship, if it please you, with
twenty picked men. I shall take twenty men from each sloop as boarders."
"Sixty in all?" queried the colonel. "Why not take a hundred?"
"They would be tumbling over one another,--too much confusion. This is
not a large vessel yonder. We must have room on deck to swing and cut."
"I will have my men away in ten minutes, Lieutenant Maynard," crisply
replied the blonde, raw-boned Scotsman with a finger at his hat-brim in
courteous salute. He proceeded to call the men by name, strapping, sober
fellows who had followed the sea amid the frequent perils of the
merchant service. Jack Cockrell was the only landsman and he felt
greatly honored that he should be included. Gone was his unmanly
trepidation. Was he more worthy to live than these humble seamen who
fought to make the ocean safer for other voyagers, who were true kinsmen
of the Elizabethan heroes of blue water? He tarried a moment to wring
Joe Hawkridge's hand in farewell and to tell him:
"If I have ill luck in this adventure, old comrade,--do you mind
presenting my best compliments, and--and a fond farewell to Mistress
Dorothy Stuart?"
"Strike me, Jack, stow that or you'll have me blubberin'," said Joe.
"Bring me a lock of Cap'n Teach's whiskers as a token for my lass in
Fayal if ever I clap eyes on her again. And you'd best take this heavy
cutlass which I whetted a-purpose for ye. 'Twill split a pirate like
slicin' an apple."
With this useful gift in his hand, Master Cockrell swung himself into
the boat where Colonel Stuart stood in the stern-sheets. Perhaps he,
too, was dwelling on a fair maid named Dorothy who might be left
fatherless before the sun climbed an hour higher. The sloops were moving
nearer the cay under sail and oar, trailing their crowded boats behind
them. Blackbeard had hauled two or three of his guns into such positions
that he could open fire but the sloops crawled doggedly into the shoal
water and so screened their boats until these were ready to cast off for
the final dash.
It was a rare sea picture, the stranded brig with canvas loose on the
yards and ropes streaming, her listed decks a-swarm with pirates in
outlandish, vari-colored garb, the surf playing about her in a bright
dazzle and the gulls screaming overhead. The broad, squat figure of
Blackbeard himself was never more conspicuous. He no longer strutted the
quarter-deck but was all over the ship, menacing his men with his
pistols, shifting them in groups for defense, shouldering bags of
munitions, or heaping up the grenades and stink-pots to be lighted and
thrown into the attacking boats.
It was his humor to adorn himself more elaborately than usual. Under his
broad hat with the great feather in it he had stuck lengths of tow
matches which were all sputtering and burning so that he ran to and fro
in a cloud of sparks and smoke like that Evil One whom he professed to
admire. He realized, no doubt, that this was likely to be his last
stand. The inferno which he was so fond of counterfeiting, fairly yawned
at his feet.
And now the sloops let go their anchors while from astern of them
appeared the three boats of the assailants. They steered wide of each
other to seek different parts of the pirate brig and so divide
Blackbeard's force. The boats of Colonel Stuart and Lieutenant Maynard
were racing for the honor of first place alongside. Blackbeard trained
two guns on them, filled with grape and chain-shot, and one boat was
shattered but it swam long enough for the cheering men to pull it to the
brig and toss their grapples to the rail which was inclined quite close
to the water. They were in the surf which broke against the ship, but
this was a mere trifle.
Most of them went up the side like cats, leaping for the chains and
dead-eyes, slashing at the nettings, swinging by a rope's end, or
digging their toes in a crack of a gun-port. Forward they were pouring
over the bowsprit, vaulting like acrobats from the anchor stocks, or
swarming up the stays. It seemed beyond belief that they could gain
footing on the decks with Blackbeard's demons stabbing and hacking and
shooting at them, but in such manner as this was many a great sea fight
won in the brave days of old.
Lieutenant Maynard gained his lodgment in the bows amid a swirl of
pirates who tried to pen him in front of the forecastle house. But his
tars of the Royal Navy were accustomed to close quarters and they
straightway made room for themselves. Chest to chest and hand to hand
they hewed their way toward the waist of the ship where Colonel Stuart
raged like the braw, bonny Highlander that he was. Almost at the same
time, the third boat had made fast under the jutting stern gallery and
its twenty men were piling in through the cabin windows like so many
human projectiles.
In the _King George_ brigantine, Captain Jonathan Wellsby fidgeted and
gnawed his lip, with a telescope at his eye, while he watched the
conflict in which he could scarce distinguish friend from foe. He could
see Blackbeard charge aft to rally his men and then whirl back to lunge
into the mêlée where towered Colonel Stuart's tall figure. The powder
smoke from pistols and muskets drifted in a thin blue haze. Joe
Hawkridge was fairly shaking with nervousness as he said to the
skipper:
"There'll be no clearing the decks 'less they down that monster of a
Cap'n Teach. And he has more lives than a cat. See you my dear crony,
Master Jack?"
"No, I cannot make him out in that mad turmoil," replied Captain
Wellsby. "Nip and tuck, I call it, Joe."
This was the opinion forced upon Lieutenant Maynard as he saw the
engagement resolve itself into a series of bloody whirlpools, his seamen
and the pirates intermingled. He won his way past the forecastle into
the wider spaces of the deck, with only a few of his twenty tars on
their feet. Colonel Stuart was hard pressed and the boarders who had
come over the stern had as much as they could do to hold their own. Thus
far the issue was indecisive.
Jack Cockrell had kept close to the colonel, and felt amazement that he
was still alive. His cheek was laid open, a bullet had torn his thigh,
and a powder burn streaked his neck, but he felt these hurts not at all.
It was a nightmare from which there seemed no escape. He saw Blackbeard
rush at him with a raucous shout of:
"The scurvy young cockerel! He will ne'er crow again."
Colonel Stuart sprang between them, blades clashed, and they were swept
apart in another wave of jostling combat. A moment later the colonel
slipped and fell as a coal-black negro chopped at him with a broken
cutlass. Jack Cockrell flew at him and they wrestled until a hip-lock
threw the negro to the deck, where the colonel made him one pirate less.
Formidable as these outlaws were, they lacked the stern cohesion which
had been drilled into the sailors of the Royal Navy and likewise learned
in the hard school of the merchant service. Very slowly the odds were
shifting against Blackbeard's crew. It was unmistakable when Lieutenant
Maynard cut his way through to join Colonel Stuart, while the third
group of boarders was advancing little by little from the after quarter.
This meant that the force was gradually uniting in spite of the furious
efforts to scatter it.
And now there came an episode which lives in history two centuries after
that scene of carnage on the decks of the stranded brig. It has
preserved the name of a humble lieutenant of the Royal Navy and saved it
from the oblivion which is the common lot of most brave men who do and
dare when duty beckons.
Blackbeard was bleeding from a dozen wounds and yet his activity was
unabated. He was like a grizzly bear at bay. His men began to believe
that his league with Satan, of which he obscenely boasted, had made him
invulnerable. He was all that he had proclaimed himself to be, the
wickedest and most fearsome pirate of the Western Ocean. And all the
while, the slender, boyish Lieutenant Maynard, sailor and gentleman, had
one aim in mind, and that was to slay Captain Edward Teach with his own
hand. Nor was he at all content until he had cleared a path to where the
hairy pirate was playing havoc with his broadsword.
With a loud laugh in mockery, Blackbeard snatched a loaded pistol from
one of his men and fired at this foppish young officer who presumed to
single him out. The ball chipped Maynard's ear and he dodged the pistol
which was hurled at his head. It was curious to note a lull in the
general engagement, a little interval of suspense while men regained
their breath or tried to staunch their wounds. They were unconsciously
awaiting the verdict of this duel between their leaders. Jack Cockrell,
for instance, finding himself alone by some chance, leaned against a
stanchion and heard his own blood drip--drip--on the deck.
It was a fleeting respite. Blackbeard swung his sword, with the might of
those wide shoulders behind it. The lieutenant stepped aside like
lightning and the bright weapon whistled past his arm. Then they went at
each other like blacksmiths, sparks flying as steel bit steel. Dexterity
and a cool wit were a match for the pirate's untamable strength. Gory,
snarling, Blackbeard shortened his stroke to use the point. The
lieutenant dropped to one knee, thrust upward, and found a vital spot.
Blackbeard stood staring at him with wonder in his eyes. Then those
thick, bowed legs gave way and he toppled like a tree uprooted. He
passed out quietly enough, with no more cursing, and in this last moment
of sensibility his thoughts appeared to wander far to his youth as a
brisk merchant seaman out of Bristol port, for he was heard to mutter,
with a long sigh:
"A pretty babe as ever was, Mollie, and the mortal image of its mother."
To his waist the sable beard covered him like a pall and one corded arm
was flung across his breast and it showed the design of the skull and
cross-bones pricked in India ink. Then as if the dead leader had issued
the command, the surviving pirates began to fling down their weapons and
loudly cry for quarter. They need not have felt ashamed of the
resistance they had made up to this time, but now the delirium of combat
had slackened and Blackbeard was no more. One or two of his officers
were alive and they knew that the game was lost. Reinforcements could be
sent from the sloops and the brigantine as soon as they were signaled
for. And there was no flight from a stranded ship. Blackbeard had been
able to infuse them with his own madness. Better chance the gallows than
no quarter.
Here and there a few of the most desperate dogs of the Spanish Main who
had followed Blackbeard's fortunes a long time, refused to surrender but
they were either shot down or overpowered. Captain Wellsby was sending
off two boats from the _King George_ with his surgeon, and the sloops
were kedging in closer to the cay with the rising tide. Half the seamen
were beyond aid and of the pirates no more than twenty were alive. Jack
Cockrell was thankful to have come off so lightly, and he consoled
himself with the notion that a scar across his cheek would be a manly
memento. Colonel Stuart had been several times wounded but 'tis hard
killing a Highlander.
It was Lieutenant Maynard's duty to offer public proof that he had slain
none other than the infamous Blackbeard, wherefore he made no protest
when his armorer hacked off the head of the dead pirate. There was no
feeling of chivalry due a fallen foe, valiant though his end had been.
This horrid trophy was tied at the end of a sloop's bowsprit, to be
displayed for the gratification of all honest sailormen who might behold
it in port. It was not a gentle age on blue water and Captain Edward
Teach had been the death of many helpless people during his wicked
career.
Lieutenant Maynard announced that he would take the two sloops into Bath
Town, before proceeding to Virginia, as they were overcrowded vessels
and the survivors of the boarding party needed proper care ashore. It
would also afford the unscrupulous Governor Eden of North Carolina an
opportunity to see his friend, Captain Teach, as a pirate who would
divide no more plundered merchandise with him.
The brigantine _King George_ was ready to escort them into Pamlico
Sound, after which she would sail for Charles Town. Before the
departure from the entrance of Cherokee Inlet, the stranded vessel was
set afire and blazed grandly as the funeral pyre of Blackbeard's stout
lads who would go no more a-roving.
Never was a nurse more devoted than Joe Hawkridge when his comrade was
mercifully restored to him. Jack was woefully pale and weak but in
blithe spirits and thankful to have seen the last of Blackbeard.
"Hulled in the leg and a damaged figger-head," said Joe, as he sat on
the edge of the hero's bunk. "Triflin', I call it, when I expected to
see you come aboard feet first wrapped in a bit o' canvas."
"I don't want to talk about it, Joe. Let's find something pleasant. Ho
for Charles Town, and the green trees and a bench in the shade."
"And a tidy little vessel after a while, you and me and the Councilor
a-pleasurin' up the coast with men and gear to fish up the treasure
chest."
"And you believe that Blackbeard never got back to the Inlet to save the
treasure for himself?" asked Jack.
"Not the way his ship was headed when she struck the shoal."
The brigantine was well on her way to Charles Town when Captain Wellsby
found that Master Cockrell could be carried into the comfortable main
cabin to rest on a cushioned settle for an hour or two at a time. It was
during one of these visits, when Joe Hawkridge was present, that the
skipper remembered to say:
"Here is a bit of memorandum which may entertain you lads. Lieutenant
Maynard had Blackbeard's quarters searched before the brig was burned.
Some valuable stuff was found, but nothing what you'd call a pirate's
treasure."
The lads looked at each other but kept their own counsel and Captain
Wellsby went on to explain:
"There was a private log, Blackbeard's own journal, with a few entries
in it, and most of the leaves torn out. I made a copy of what could be
read, for the late Captain Teach was a better pirate than scrivener.
Here, Jack, you are the scholar."
Jack read aloud this extract, which was about what might have been
expected:
"_Such a day! Rum all out,--our company somewhat sober. A confusion
amongst us,--rogues a-plotting--great talk of separation. So I looked
sharp for a prize. Took one, with a great deal of liquor on board, so
kept the company hot, very hot. Then all things went well again._"
"That sounds familiar enough to me," was Joe Hawkridge's comment. "And
the rest of his writing will be much like it."
"Not so fast," exclaimed Captain Wellsby. "Scan the next page, Jack.
'Twill fetch you up all standing. Not that it puts gold in our pockets,
for we know not where to search, but I swear it will make your eyes
sparkle and your mouth water."
Trying to hide his excitement, Jack saw a kind of rough inventory, and
it ran like this:
"Where I Hid Itt This Cruse:
1 Bag 54 Silver Barrs. 1 Bag 79 Barrs & Peaces of
Silver.
1 Bag Coyned Gold. 1 Bag Dust Gold. 2 Bags Gold
Barrs.
1 Bag Silver Rings & Sundry Precious Stones. 3
Bags Unpolyshed Stones.
1 Silver Box set with Diamonds. 4 Golden Lockets.
Also 1 Silver Porringer--2 Gold Boxons--7 Green
Stones--Rubies Great & Small 67--P'cl Peaces of
Eight & Dollars--Also 1 Bag Lump Silver--a Small
Chaine--a corral Necklace--1 Bag English Crowns."
Captain Jonathan Wellsby listened to this luscious recital with an air
of mild amusement. He was of a temper too stolid and sensible to waste
his time on random treasure hunting. Blackbeard might have chosen his
hiding-place anywhere along hundreds of leagues of coast. He could
understand the agitation of these two adventurous lads to whom this
memorandum was like a magic spell. Of such was the spirit of youth.
"Any more of it?" demanded Joe Hawkridge.
"The next page was ripped out of the journal," answered the skipper.
"What cruise did he mean? If it was this last one, he may have hid it on
the Virginia or Carolina coast."
Master Cockrell gave it as an excuse that he had sat up long enough and
would return to his bunk. He was fairly bursting for a conference with
Joe, and as soon as they were alone he exclaimed:
"It may be the sea-chest! What do you think?"
"A handsome clue, I call it, something to warm the cockles of your
heart," grinned the sea urchin. "Aye, Jack, I should wager he wrote that
down whilst he lay at anchor in Cherokee Inlet."
"It seems shabby of us to keep the secret from Captain Wellsby, but
there is an obligation on us----"
"To Bill Saxby and the old sea wolf," said Joe. "We'll not forget this
trump of a skipper when it comes to splittin' up the treasure."
"I am anxious for Captain Bonnet and his crew," remarked Jack. "With
this crusade against pirates afoot, our friends may be hanged before we
see them again."