hat you were saying. Well, what then? You don't think I'm afraid of his
bullies, do you?"

"Why, no, Captain, I didn't say you was afraid," said the visiting
captain.

"And what right has he got to send down here against me in North
Carolina, I should like to ask you?"

"He's got none at all," said the Boston captain, soothingly. "Won't you
take a taste of Hollands, Captain?"

"He's no more right to come blustering down here into Governor Eden's
province than I have to come aboard of your schooner here, Tom Burley,
and to carry off two or three kegs of this prime Hollands for my own
drinking."

Captain Burley--the Boston man--laughed a loud, forced laugh. "Why,
Captain," he said, "as for two or three kegs of Hollands, you won't
find that aboard. But if you'd like to have a keg of it for your own
drinking, I'll send it to you and be glad enough to do so for old
acquaintance' sake."

"But I tell you what 'tis, Captain," said the visiting skipper to
Blackbeard, "they're determined and set against you this time. I tell
you, Captain, Governor Spottiswood hath issued a hot proclamation
against you, and 't hath been read out in all the churches. I myself
saw it posted in Yorktown upon the customhouse door and read it there
myself. The governor offers one hundred pounds for you, and fifty pounds
for your officers, and twenty pounds each for your men."

"Well, then," said Blackbeard, holding up his glass, "here, I wish 'em
good luck, and when they get their hundred pounds for me they'll be in a
poor way to spend it. As for the Hollands," said he, turning to Captain
Burley, "I know what you've got aboard here and what you haven't. D'ye
suppose ye can blind me? Very well, you send over two kegs, and I'll let
you go without search." The two captains were very silent. "As for that
Lieutenant Maynard you're all talking about," said Blackbeard, "why, I
know him very well. He was the one who was so busy with the pirates down
Madagascar way. I believe you'd all like to see him blow me out of the
water, but he can't do it. There's nobody in His Majesty's service I'd
rather meet than Lieutenant Maynard. I'd teach him pretty briskly that
North Carolina isn't Madagascar."

On the evening of the twenty-second the two vessels under command of
Lieutenant Maynard came into the mouth of Ocracoke Inlet and there
dropped anchor. Meantime the weather had cleared, and all the vessels
but one had gone from the inlet. The one vessel that rem