was already drowned, this was as good as certain, and Jack jumped from
the pirogue.

Blackbeard had halted his onrush and he wavered when he beheld stout
Bill Saxby within a few strides of him and long Trimble Rogers galloping
through the grass with his musket. Another pistol shot or two would not
stop these three antagonists and a buffet from one of those hewn paddles
would dash out a man's brains. The most ferocious of all pirates for
once preferred to run away and live to fight another day. His boat
denied him, he whirled about to plunge through the tall, matted grass.
He was running in the direction of the dry knoll whence he had
appeared.

Infuriated by the fate of the two seamen, Trimble Rogers made a try at
shooting him on the wing but the musket ball failed to find the mark. It
was necessary to hunt him down for the sake of their own safety. They
might have gone their way in the pirogue but this would have been to
abandon the sea-chest without an effort to drag it up or fix its
location.

Now it might seem an easy matter for these pursuers, two of them young
and active, to run down this fugitive Blackbeard, encumbered as he was
by middle age and dissipation. They put after him boldly, with little
fear of his pistols. In this dense cover he would have to fire at them
haphazard and he was unlikely to tarry and wait for them. They saw him
in glimpses as he fled from one grassy patch to another, or burst out of
a leafy thicket, the great beard streaming over his shoulders like
studding-sails, the red turban of calico a vivid blotch of color.

Nimble as they were, however, they failed to overtake him. This was
because he was familiar with this landscape of bog and hummock and pine
knoll. Jack Cockrell fell into a hidden quagmire and had to be fished
out by main strength. Bill Saxby was caught amidst the tenacious vines,
like a bull by the horns, and old Trimble came a cropper in a patch of
saw-tooth palmetto. They straggled to the nearest knoll after Blackbeard
had crossed it. Then he followed a ridge which led in the direction of
another of these dry islands.

The pursuers halted to gaze from this slight elevation. There was not a
solitary glimpse of the crimson turban. Trimble Rogers plowed through
the prickly ash, short of wind and temper, with the musket again ready
for action. His language was hot enough to flash the powder in the pan.

"Lost him a'ready, ye lubbers, whilst I fetched up the rear?" he
sc