ll me, boys, who took you off the little
raft and whence come you in this ship's boat?"

"Blackbeard rescued us. And we borrowed the boat from him," demurely
answered Jack, watching the effect of this bombshell of a sensation.

"_Blackbeard!_" echoed the bedazed shipmaster and the others chimed it
like a chorus.

"Aye, old Buckets o' Blood hisself," grinned Joe Hawkridge. "We had him
tamed proper when we parted company. First we chased him through a swamp
till his tongue hung out and left him mired to the whiskers. Then for
another lark we scared him in his own ship so he begged us on his knees
to forbear. We learned Cap'n Ed'ard Teach his manners, eh, Jack?"

This was too much for the audience which stood agape. A dozen voices at
once implored enlightenment. With a lordly air for a youth whose costume
was mostly one leg of his breeches, Master Cockrell reproved them to
wit:

"Captain Stede Bonnet was more courteous to our distress when we sailed
with him. He gave us a thumping big breakfast."

"Right-o," declared Joe. "'Tis our custom to spin strange yarns for
clothes and vittles in payment."

The men scampered to the galley and pantry but refused to let Captain
Wellsby carry these rare entertainers into the cabin. Graciously they
sketched the chief events, omitting all mention of the treasure chest,
and Jack explained in conclusion:

"And so I was stricken homesick, like an illness, and Joe had his fill
of pirates, too. The wind was wrong to rejoin Captain Bonnet in the
Inlet harbor after we shipped as ghosts in the jolly-boat, and we had a
mariner's chart of the Carolina coast and----"

"But what did you do for subsistence?" broke in Captain Wellsby.

"Food and water?" answered Joe. "Oh, we landed when the thirst plagued
us too bad. And there was rain to fill a bight of the sail and a
pannikin to save it in."

"And we lived on oysters mostly," said Jack, "and Joe killed a fat
opossum with a club, and we caught some fish in a net which I knotted
from a ball of marline that was in the boat. And we foraged for pawpaws
and persimmons."

"And whenever the breeze was fair we put to sea again," said Joe, "and
it was a long and weary voyage, though not so many leagues on the
chart."

The captain's boat was ready and they tumbled in, two wayfarers of the
sea who were as lean and sun-dried as the buccaneers of old Trimble
Rogers' fond memories. Hardships had seasoned and weathered them like
good ash staves. On