ate of the day.

Bonnet was a good soldier and a brave man, and although he could not
sail a ship, he understood the use of the sword even better, perhaps,
than Blackbeard, and there is good reason to believe that if the two
ships had come together, their respective crews would have allowed their
captains to fight out their private quarrel without interference, for
pirates delight in a bloody spectacle, and this would have been to them
a rare diversion of the kind.

But Bonnet never overtook Blackbeard, and the great combat between the
rival pirates did not take place. After vainly searching for a
considerable time for a trace or sight of Blackbeard, the baffled Bonnet
gave up the pursuit and turned his mind to other objects. The first
thing he did was to change the name of his vessel; if he could not be
revenged, he would not sail in the _Revenge_. Casting about in his mind
for a good name, he decided to call her the _Royal James_. Having no
intention of respecting his oaths or of keeping his promises, he thought
that, as he was going to be disloyal, he might as well be as disloyal as
he could, and so he gave his ship the name assumed by the son of James
the Second, who was a pretender to the throne, and was then in France
plotting against the English government.

The next thing he did was to change his own name, for he thought this
would make matters better for him if he should be captured after
entering upon his new criminal career. So he called himself Captain
Thomas, by which name he was afterwards known.

When these preliminaries had been arranged, he gathered his crew
together and announced that instead of going to St. Thomas to get a
commission as a privateer, he had determined to keep on in his old
manner of life, and that he wished them to understand that not only was
he a pirate captain, but that they were a pirate crew. Many of the men
were very much surprised at this announcement, for they had thought it a
very natural thing for the green-hand Bonnet to give up pirating after
he had been so thoroughly snubbed by Blackbeard, and they had not
supposed that he would ever think again of sailing under a black flag.

However, the crew's opinion of the green-hand captain had been a good
deal changed. In his various cruises he had learned a good deal about
navigation, and could now give very fair orders, and his furious pursuit
of Blackbeard had also given him a reputation for reckless bravery which
he had not