r than before any others in
the world. He took away from me my sword and he gave me instead a
wretched pen; he made me nothing where I had been everything. He even
ceased to consider me any more than if I had been the dirty deck under
his feet. And then, when he had done with my property and could get no
more good out of it, he cast it to me in charity as a man would toss a
penny to a beggar. Before I sail anywhere else, Ben Greenway," continued
Bonnet, "I sail for Ocracoke Inlet, and when I sight Blackbeard's
miserable little sloop I shall pour broadside after broadside into her
until I sink his wretched craft with his bedizened carcass on board of
it."

"But wi' your men stand by ye?" cried Greenway. "Ye're neither a pirate
nor a vessel o' war to enter into a business like that."

Bonnet swore one of his greatest oaths. "There is no business nor war
for me, Ben Greenway," he cried, "until I have taught that insolent
Blackbeard what manner of man I am."

Ben Greenway was very much disheartened. "If Blackbeard should sink the
Revenge instead of Master Bonnet sinking him," he said to himself, "and
would be kind enough to maroon my old master an' me, it might be the
best for everybody after all. Master Bonnet is vera humble-minded an'
complacent when bad fortune comes upon him, an' it is my opeenion that
on a desert island I could weel manage him for the good o' his soul."

But there were no vessels sunk on that cruise. Blackbeard had gone,
nobody knew where, and after a time Bonnet gave up the search for his
old enemy and turned his bow southward. Now Ben Greenway's countenance
gleamed once more.

"It'll be a glad day at Spanish Town when Mistress Kate shall get my
letter."

"And what have you been writing to her?" cried Bonnet.

"I told her," said Ben Greenway, "how at last ye hae come to your right
mind, an' how ye are a true servant o' the king, wi' your pardon in your
pocket an' your commission waitin' for ye at St. Thomas, an' that,
whatever else ye may do at sea, there'll be no more black flag floatin'
over your head, nor a see-saw plank wobblin' under the feet o' onybody
else. The days o' your piracies are over, an' ye're an honest mon once
more."

"You wrote her that?" said Bonnet, with a frown.

"Ay," said Greenway, "an' I left it in the care o' a good mon, whose
ship is weel on its way to Kingston by this day."

That afternoon Captain Bonnet called all his men together and addressed
them.

He mad