cut."

"I will have my men away in ten minutes, Lieutenant Maynard," crisply
replied the blonde, raw-boned Scotsman with a finger at his hat-brim in
courteous salute. He proceeded to call the men by name, strapping, sober
fellows who had followed the sea amid the frequent perils of the
merchant service. Jack Cockrell was the only landsman and he felt
greatly honored that he should be included. Gone was his unmanly
trepidation. Was he more worthy to live than these humble seamen who
fought to make the ocean safer for other voyagers, who were true kinsmen
of the Elizabethan heroes of blue water? He tarried a moment to wring
Joe Hawkridge's hand in farewell and to tell him:

"If I have ill luck in this adventure, old comrade,--do you mind
presenting my best compliments, and--and a fond farewell to Mistress
Dorothy Stuart?"

"Strike me, Jack, stow that or you'll have me blubberin'," said Joe.
"Bring me a lock of Cap'n Teach's whiskers as a token for my lass in
Fayal if ever I clap eyes on her again. And you'd best take this heavy
cutlass which I whetted a-purpose for ye. 'Twill split a pirate like
slicin' an apple."

With this useful gift in his hand, Master Cockrell swung himself into
the boat where Colonel Stuart stood in the stern-sheets. Perhaps he,
too, was dwelling on a fair maid named Dorothy who might be left
fatherless before the sun climbed an hour higher. The sloops were moving
nearer the cay under sail and oar, trailing their crowded boats behind
them. Blackbeard had hauled two or three of his guns into such positions
that he could open fire but the sloops crawled doggedly into the shoal
water and so screened their boats until these were ready to cast off for
the final dash.

It was a rare sea picture, the stranded brig with canvas loose on the
yards and ropes streaming, her listed decks a-swarm with pirates in
outlandish, vari-colored garb, the surf playing about her in a bright
dazzle and the gulls screaming overhead. The broad, squat figure of
Blackbeard himself was never more conspicuous. He no longer strutted the
quarter-deck but was all over the ship, menacing his men with his
pistols, shifting them in groups for defense, shouldering bags of
munitions, or heaping up the grenades and stink-pots to be lighted and
thrown into the attacking boats.

It was his humor to adorn himself more elaborately than usual. Under his
broad hat with the great feather in it he had stuck lengths of tow
matches which we