was filled with a crowd of
grotesque dancing figures--men and women. Now and then they called
with loud voices as they danced, and the squeaking of the fiddle
sounded incessantly through the noise of outcries and the stamp and
shuffling of feet.

Captain Teach and the New York captain stood looking on. The New York
man had tilted himself against a post and stood there holding one arm
around it, supporting himself. He waved the other hand foolishly in
time to the music, now and then snapping his thumb and finger.

The young woman who had just been married approached the two. She had
been dancing, and she was warm and red, her hair blowzed about her
head. "Hi, Captain, won't you dance with me?" she said to Blackbeard.

Blackbeard stared at her. "Who be you?" he said.

She burst out laughing. "You look as if you'd eat a body," she cried.

Blackbeard's face gradually relaxed. "Why, to be sure, you're a brazen
one, for all the world," he said. "Well, I'll dance with you, that I
will. I'll dance the heart out of you."

He pushed forward, thrusting aside with his elbow the newly made
husband. The man, who saw that Blackbeard had been drinking, burst out
laughing, and the other men and women who had been standing around
drew away, so that in a little while the floor was pretty well
cleared. One could see the negro now; he sat on a barrel at the end of
the room. He grinned with his white teeth and, without stopping in his
fiddling, scraped his bow harshly across the strings, and then
instantly changed the tune to a lively jig. Blackbeard jumped up into
the air and clapped his heels together, giving, as he did so, a sharp,
short yell. Then he began instantly dancing grotesquely and violently.
The woman danced opposite to him, this way and that, with her knuckles
on her hips. Everybody burst out laughing at Blackbeard's grotesque
antics. They laughed again and again, clapping their hands, and the
negro scraped away on his fiddle like fury. The woman's hair came
tumbling down her back. She tucked it back, laughing and panting, and
the sweat ran down her face. She danced and danced. At last she burst
out laughing and stopped, panting. Blackbeard again jumped up in the
air and clapped his heels. Again he yelled, and as he did so, he
struck his heels upon the floor and spun around. Once more everybody
burst out laughing, clapping their hands, and the negro stopped
fiddling.

[Illustration: "He Led Jack up to a Man Who Sat upo