him, and sang them under
his windows. James Annesley was now called Lord Altham. But before the
young lord came into possession of his title and his property, he was
taken ill and died.

I am glad that we live in better times. Children are not kidnapped and
sold now.

THE LAST BATTLE OF BLACKBEARD.

Our country now reaches from one ocean to the other. But in the days
before the Revolution there were only English colonies stretching up
and down the Atlantic coast. Merchandise was carried from one colony
to another, and from one country to another, in slow-going sailing
vessels, for there were neither railroads nor steamships.

In those old times there were robbers on the sea. We call sea robbers
pirates. These men carried cannon on their ships, and they robbed any
vessels not stronger than they were. In our days of large steamships a
pirate would not stand any chance of getting away. He would soon be
caught. Some of the pirates of old times sailed up and down the
American coast. They captured ships sailing from America to Europe and
from Europe to America. The worst of all these pirates was Blackbeard.

His real name was Thatch. He was called Blackbeard because he wore a
long black beard that covered his face. This made him look frightful
in that day, when other men shaved their faces smooth. He divided his
beard into locks, and twisted each lock, tying it at the end with
ribbons. To make himself look still worse, he fastened some of these
twists over his ears.

[Illustration: Blackbeard.]

When he was fighting against another ship, he wore a strap over his
shoulders to which were fastened large pistols. In those days, cannon
were touched off by means of a slow match, a kind of cord that burns
slowly like punk. When Blackbeard went into battle, he twisted some of
these slow matches or cords round his head, and stuck some of them
under his hat. The ends of these matches were burning, and they looked
like fiery, hissing snakes. With his beard turned back over his ears,
and fire all about his head, he seemed to be a tall fiend.

Blackbeard was more like a fiend than a man. He was cruel and wicked
in every way. Some bad men are sometimes kind-hearted, but Blackbeard
was always cruel. He would shoot even his own men in order to make his
crew afraid of him.

He did much of his bad work on the coast of North Carolina. Here he
found bays and sounds where the water was shallow. Large ships could
not easily fol