have found them."

"I was in hopes of hearing news of the lads from you," sorrowfully said
the shipmaster. "There is the chance, tiny though it be, that they were
sighted by some vessel bound to foreign parts, across the Western
Ocean."

The uncle shook his head in a manner profoundly dejected. There were
duties which summoned him and he choked down his own grief, turning from
the sympathetic mariner to minister to those in distress. Horse litters
were soon ready for the exhausted but heroic women who had been kept
alive by the devotion of the noble British seamen in accordance with the
traditions of the merchant service. Those unable to walk farther were
placed in carts. Clothed and fed, the sailors were in blithe spirits and
talked of going to sea again as soon as they could find a ship.

In the crowd which met them on the outskirts of the Charles Town
settlement was Dorothy Stuart. She scanned the straggling column and
then ran from one cart to another. It was impossible to convince her
that Jack Cockrell was not there. But when she heard from Uncle Peter
the news that Jack was missing but not surely dead, her faith burned
anew, triumphant over fact and reason.

"See how the great storm came to save him from Blackbeard," she cried,
her hand nestling in Uncle Peter's arm. "And look how he came unscathed
through that bloody battle with the pirates in the _Plymouth Adventure_.
Why, a cruise on a raft is merely a frolic after all that."

"I would not discourage your dear dreams, sweet maid," was the gentle
response. "And may they be truer than my own forebodings."

Charles Town was more than ever resentful when it learned from these
poor people how the pirate sailing-master, Ned Rackham, had plotted to
get rid of them and how mournful had been their sufferings after the
shipwreck. The one boat left to them had been too rotten to send along
the coast and they had plunged into a wilderness almost impassable.

Meanwhile Governor Johnson, stirred by this episode, had received word
that the province of Virginia was both ready and anxious to join in an
expedition against Blackbeard. Governor Spottswood of Virginia would be
outfitting such craft as he could get together in the James River while
he awaited a reinforcement from Charles Town.

The best vessel available for immediate use was a small brigantine, the
_King George_. There was no lack of eager seamen when Councilor Forbes
and Colonel Stuart proclaimed the muste