fowls, all bound with ropes.
We blundered fair into the camp last night, and old Trimble Rogers here,
his legs knotted with cramps, couldn't make a run for it. They saved us
for Blackbeard's pleasure but he had other fish to fry."

"What then?" demanded Jack.

"'Twas Joe Hawkridge that ran to cut our bonds when the fight began. And
he bade us leg it for the pirogue and carry word to you. A pledge of
honor, he called it, to stand by his dear friend Jack, and he made us
swear it."

"Bless him for a Christian knight of a pirate," said Jack, with tears in
his eyes. "Was he hurt, did ye happen to note?"

"We hid ourselves till the prisoners were flung into the boats. I marked
Joe as one of 'em, and he was sprightly, barring a bloody face."

"Marooned, Bill Saxby?" asked Jack. "What's your judgment on that
score? It cannot be many leagues from here, or the ship would have
transported them instead of the boats."

"These barren islands lie strung well out from the coast, Master
Cockrell. Waterless they be, and without shelter. Blackbeard's fancy is
to let the men die there----"

"An ancient custom of buccaneers and pirates," put in old Trimble
Rogers, with an air of grave authority. "I mind me in the year of 1687
when I sailed in the South Sea with that great captain, Edward
Davis,--'twas after the sack of Guayaquil when every man had a greater
weight of gold and silver than he could lug on his back----"

Bill Saxby interrupted, in a petulant manner:

"Stow it, grandsire! At a better time ye can please the lad with your
long-winded yarns,--of marching on Panama with Henry Morgan when the
mother's milk was scarce dry on your lips."

"I cruised with the best of 'em," boasted the last of the storied race
of true buccaneers of the Spanish Main, "and now I be in this cheap
trade of piratin'. The fortunes I gamed away, and the plate ships I
boarded! Take warnin', boy, and salt your treasure down."

"This Trimble Rogers will talk you deaf," said Bill Saxby, "but there's
pith in his old bones and wisdom under yon hoary thatch. Cap'n Bonnet
sent him along with me as a rare old hound to trail the swamps."

In a vivid flash of remembrance, Jack Cockrell saw this salty relic of
the Spanish Main among the crew which had disported itself on the tavern
green at Charles Town,--the old man sitting aside with a couple of stray
children upon his knees while his head nodded to the lilt of the fiddle.
And again there had been a glimp