"The villains!" said the boatswain, "they
are all in league together. They wouldn't even let me go up into the
settlement to look for a pilot."

* * * * *

The lieutenant and his sailing master stood watching the boat as it
approached. "Couldn't you, then, get a pilot, Baldwin?" said Mr.
Maynard, as the boatswain scrambled aboard.

"No, I couldn't, sir," said the man. "Either they're all banded
together, or else they're all afraid of the villains. They wouldn't
even let me go up into the settlement to find one."

"Well, then," said Mr. Maynard, "we'll make shift to work in as best
we may by ourselves. 'Twill be high tide against one o'clock. We'll
run in then with sail as far as we can, and then we'll send you ahead
with the boat to sound for a pass, and we'll follow with the sweeps.
You know the waters pretty well, you say."

"They were saying ashore that the villain hath forty men aboard," said
the boatswain.[2]

[Footnote 2: The pirate captain had really only twenty-five men aboard
of his sloop at the time of the battle.]

Lieutenant Maynard's force consisted of thirty-five men in the
schooner and twenty-five men in the sloop. He carried neither cannons
nor carronades, and neither of his vessels was very well fitted for
the purpose for which they were designed. The schooner, which he
himself commanded, offered almost no protection to the crew. The rail
was not more than a foot high in the waist, and the men on the deck
were almost entirely exposed. The rail of the sloop was perhaps a
little higher, but it, too, was hardly better adapted for fighting.
Indeed, the lieutenant depended more upon the moral force of official
authority to overawe the pirates than upon any real force of arms or
men. He never believed, until the very last moment, that the pirates
would show any real fight. It is very possible that they might not
have done so had they not thought that the lieutenant had actually no
legal right supporting him in his attack upon them in North Carolina
waters.

It was about noon when anchor was hoisted, and, with the schooner
leading, both vessels ran slowly in before a light wind that had begun
to blow toward midday. In each vessel a man stood in the bows,
sounding continually with lead and line. As they slowly opened up the
harbor within the inlet, they could see the pirate sloop lying about
three miles away. There was a boat just putting off from it to the
shore.

T