by hour, farther and farther away from
the island on which dwelt the angel Kate--that angel Kate and his
mother. But none of these considerations could keep down the glad
feeling that he was going, that he was moving. Moreover, in answer to
one of his impassioned appeals to be set ashore at Jamaica, Blackbeard
had said to him that if he should get tired of him he did not see, at
that moment, any reason why he should not put him on board some
convenient vessel and have him landed at Kingston.

Dickory did not believe very much in the black-bearded pirate, with his
wild tricks and inhuman high spirits, but Jamaica lay to the east, and
he was going eastward.

Incited, perhaps, by the possession of a fine ship, manned by a crew
picked from his old vessel and from the men who had formed the crew of
the Revenge, Blackbeard was in better spirits than was his wont, and so
far as his nature would allow he treated Dickory with fair good-humour.
But no matter what happened, his unrestrained imagination never failed
him. Having taken the fancy to see Dickory always in full uniform, he
allowed him to assume no other clothes; he was always in naval
full-dress and cocked hat, and his duties were those of a private
secretary.

"The only shrewd thing I ever knew your Sir Nightcap to do," he said,
"was to tell me you could not read nor write. He spoke so glibly that I
believed him. Had it not been so I should have sent you to the town to
help with the shore end of my affairs, and then you would have been
there still and I should have had no admiral to write my log and
straighten my accounts."

Sometimes, in his quieter moods, when there was no provocation to send
pistol-balls between two sailors quietly conversing, or to perform some
other demoniac trick, Blackbeard would talk to Dickory and ask all
manner of questions, some of which the young man answered, while some he
tried not to answer. Thus it was that the pirate found out a great deal
more about Dickory's life, hope, and sorrows than the young fellow
imagined that he made known. He discovered that Dickory was greatly
interested in Bonnet's daughter, and wished above all other things in
this world to get to her and to be with her.

This was a little out of the common run of things among the brotherhood;
it was their fashion to forget, so far as they were able, the family
ties which already belonged to them, and to make no plans for any future
ties of that sort which they migh