--and a better apprenticeship could no man serve. At last, somewhere
about the latter part of the year 1716, a privateering captain, one
Benjamin Hornigold, raised him from the ranks and put him in command of
a sloop--a lately captured prize and Blackbeard's fortune was made. It
was a very slight step, and but the change of a few letters, to convert
"privateer" into "pirate," and it was a very short time before Teach
made that change. Not only did he make it himself, but he persuaded his
old captain to join with him.

And now fairly began that series of bold and lawless depredations which
have made his name so justly famous, and which placed him among the very
greatest of marooning freebooters.

"Our hero," says the old historian who sings of the arms and bravery of
this great man--"our hero assumed the cognomen of Blackbeard from that
large quantity of hair which, like a frightful meteor, covered his whole
face, and frightened America more than any comet that appeared there
in a long time. He was accustomed to twist it with ribbons into small
tails, after the manner of our Ramillies wig, and turn them about his
ears. In time of action he wore a sling over his shoulders, with three
brace of pistols, hanging in holsters like bandoleers; he stuck lighted
matches under his hat, which, appearing on each side of his face, and
his eyes naturally looking fierce and wild, made him altogether such a
figure that imagination cannot form an idea of a Fury from hell to look
more frightful."

The night before the day of the action in which he was killed he sat up
drinking with some congenial company until broad daylight. One of them
asked him if his poor young wife knew where his treasure was hidden.
"No," says Blackbeard; "nobody but the devil and I knows where it is,
and the longest liver shall have all."

As for that poor young wife of his, the life that he and his rum-crazy
shipmates led her was too terrible to be told.

For a time Blackbeard worked at his trade down on the Spanish Main,
gathering, in the few years he was there, a very neat little fortune in
the booty captured from sundry vessels; but by and by he took it into
his head to try his luck along the coast of the Carolinas; so off
he sailed to the northward, with quite a respectable little fleet,
consisting of his own vessel and two captured sloops. From that time he
was actively engaged in the making of American history in his small way.

He first appeared off t