nd--horrible shores to him--bound to the
shores of England and to Blackbeard's Eliza!

He was not a fool, this Dickory; he had no unwarrantable and romantic
fears that in these enlightened days one man could say to another, "Go
you, and marry the woman I have chosen for you." There was nothing silly
or cowardly about him, but he knew Blackbeard.

Not one ray of hope thrust itself through his hands into his brain. Hope
had gone, gone to the bottom, and he was on his storm-tossed way to the
waters of another continent.

But in the midst of his despair Dickory never thought of freeing
himself, by a sudden bound, of the world and his woes. So long as Kate
should live he must live, even if it were to prove to himself, and to
himself only, how faithful to her he could be.

It was dark when men came tumbling below, throwing themselves into
hammocks and bunks, and Dickory prepared to turn in. If sleep should
come and without dreams, it would be greater gain than bags of gold. As
he took off his coat, the letter of the English captain dropped from his
breast. Until then he had forgotten it, but now he remembered it as a
sacred trust. The dull light of the lantern barely enabled him to
discern objects about him, but he stuck the letter into a crack in the
woodwork where in the morning he would see it and take proper care of
it.

Soon sleep came, but not without dreams. He dreamed that he was rowing
Kate on the river at Bridgetown, and that she told him in a low sweet
voice, with a smile on her lips and her eyes tenderly upturned, that
she would like to row thus with him forever.

Early in the morning, through an open port-hole, the light of the
eastern sun stole into this abode of darkness and sin and threw itself
upon the red-stained letter sticking in the crack of the woodwork.
Presently Dickory opened his eyes, and the first thing they fell upon
was that letter. On the side of the folded sheet he could see the
superscription, boldly but irregularly written: "Miss Kate Bonnet,
Kingston, Ja."

Dickory sat upright, his eyes hard-fixed and burning. How long he sat he
knew not. How long his brain burned inwardly, as his eyes burned
outwardly, he knew not. The noise of the watch going on deck roused him,
and in a moment he had the letter in his hands.

All that day Dickory Charter was worth nothing to anybody. Blackbeard
swore at him and pushed him aside. The young fellow could not even count
the doubloons in a bag.

"Go