es at every available point set
up a cheer. Never before had they beheld such a magnificent and reckless
miscreant.

Dickory did not start or move, but he turned very pale, and then he
reddened and his eyes flashed. Blackbeard swore at him a great
approbative oath. "A brave boy!" he cried, "and fit to carry messages if
for nothing else. And what is this nonsense about a daughter?" said he
to Bonnet. "We abide no such creatures in the ranks of the free
companions; we drown them like kittens before we hoist the Jolly Roger."

When Blackbeard's boat left the ship's side the departing chieftain
fired his pistols in the air as long as their charges lasted, while the
motley desperadoes of the Revenge gave him many a parting yell. Then all
the boats of the Revenge were lowered, and every man who could crowd
into them left their ship for the shore. Black Paul tried to restrain
them, for he feared to leave the Revenge too weakly manned, she having
such a valuable cargo; but his orders and shouts were of no avail, and
despairing of stopping them the sailing-master went with them; and as
they pulled wildly towards the town the men of one boat shouted to
another, and that one to another, "Hurrah for our captain, the brave Sir
Nightcap! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!"

"The dirty Satan!" exclaimed Dickory, as he gazed after Blackbeard's
boat. "I would kill him if I could."

"Say not so, Dickory," said Captain Bonnet, speaking gravely. "That
great pirate is not a man of breeding, and he speaks with disesteem
alike of friend and enemy, but he is the famous Blackbeard, and we must
treat him with honour although he pays us none."

"I had deemed," said Greenway calmly, "that ye were goin' to be the
maist unholy sinner that ever blackened this fair earth; but not only
did ye tell a pious lie for the sake o' good Dickory, but, compared wi'
that monstrosity, ye are a saint graved in marble, Master Bonnet, a
white and shapely saint."

* * * * *

Blackbeard's boat was not rowed to his vessel, but his men pulled
steadily shoreward.

With the wild crew of the Revenge, fresh from sea and their appetites
whetted for jovial riot, and with Blackbeard, his war-paint on, to lead
them into every turbulent excess, there were wild times in the town of
Belize that night.

CHAPTER XVIII

I HAVE NO RIGHT; I AM A PIRATE

As has been made plain, Captain Bonnet of the Revenge was a punctilious
man when the rules