 Section 8 of Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Barry Eads. Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle. Compiled by Merle Johnson. Section 8. Tom Chist and the Treasure Box. Part 1. An Old Time Story of the Days of Captain Kid. Sub Chapter 1. To tell about Tom Chist and how he got his name, and how he came to be living at the little settlement of Henlopen, just inside the mouth of the Delaware Bay, the story must begin as far back as 1686, when a great storm swept the Atlantic coast from end to end. During the heaviest part of the hurricane, a bark went ashore on the hen and chicken shoals, just below Cape Henlopen and at the mouth of the Delaware Bay, and Tom Chist was the only soul of all those on board the ill-fated vessel who escaped alive. This story must first be told because it was on account of the strange and miraculous escape that happened to him at that time that he gained the name that was given to him. Even as late as that time of the American colonies, the little scattered settlement at Henlopen, made up of English with a few Dutch and Swedish people, was still only a spot upon the face of the great American wilderness that spread away with swamp and forest, no man knew how far to the westward. That wilderness was not only full of wild beasts, but of Indian savages, who every fall would come in wandering tribes to spend the winter along the shores of the fresh water lakes below Henlopen. There for four or five months they would live upon fish and clams and wild ducks and geese, chipping their arrowheads and making their earthenware pots and pans under the lee of the sandhills and pine woods below the capes. Sometimes on Sundays, when the Reverend Hillary Jones would be preaching in the little log church back in the woods, those half-clad red savages would come in from the cold and sit squatting in the back part of the church, listening stolidly to the words that had no meaning for them. But about the wreck of the bark in 1686. Such a wreck as that, which then went ashore on the hen and chicken shoals, was a godsend to the poor and needy settlers in the wilderness where so few goods ever came. For the vessel went to pieces during the night, and the next morning the beach was strewn with wreckage. Boxes and barrels, chests and spars, timbers and plank, a plentiful and bountiful harvest to be gathered up by the settlers as they chose, with no one to forbid or prevent them. The name of the bark, as found painted on some of the water barrels and sea chests, was the Bristol merchant, and she no doubt hailed from England. As was said, the only soul who escaped alive off the wreck was Tom Chist. A settler, a fisherman named Matt Aaronson, and his daughter Molly found time. He was washed up on the beach among the wreckage, in a great wooden box which had been securely tied around with a rope and lashed between two spars, apparently for better protection in beating through the surf. Matt Aaronson thought he had found something of more than usual value when he came upon this chest, but when he cut the cords and broke open the box with his broadaxe, he could not have been more astonished had he beheld a salamander, instead of a baby of nine or ten months old, lying half smothered in the blankets that covered the bottom of the chest. Matt Abramson's daughter Molly had had a baby who had died a month or so before, so when she saw the little one lying there in the bottom of the chest, she cried out in a great loud voice that the good man had sent her another baby in place of her own. The rain was driving before the hurricane's storm in dim slanting sheets, and so she wrapped up the baby in the man's coat she wore, and ran off home without waiting to gather up any more of the wreckage. It was Parson Jones who gave the fondling his name. When the news came to his ears of what Matt Abramson had found, he went over to the fisherman's cabin to see the child. He examined the clothes in which the baby was dressed. They were of fine linen and handsomely stitched, and the reverend gentleman opined that the fondling's parents must have been of quality. A kerchief had been wrapped around the baby's neck and under its arms and tied behind, and in the corner marked with very fine needlework were the initials T.C. What do you call him, Molly? said Parson Jones. He was standing as he spoke with his back to the fire, warming his palms before the blaze. The pocket of the great coat he wore bulged out with a big case bottle of spirits which he had gathered up out of the wreck that afternoon. What do you call him, Molly? I'll call him Tom, after my own baby. That goes very well with the initial on the kerchief, said Parson Jones. But what other name ye give him? Let it be something to go with the sea. I don't know, said Molly. Why not call him Chist, since he was born in a Chist out of the sea? Tom Chist. The name goes off like a flash in the pan. And so, Tom Chist, he was called, and Tom Chist, he was christened. So much for the beginning of the history of Tom Chist. The story of Captain Ked's treasure box does not begin until the late spring of 1699. That was the year that the famous pirate, coming up from the West Indies, sailed his sloop into the Delaware Bay, where he lay for over a month, waiting for news from his friends in New York. For he had sent word to that town, asking if the coast was clear for him to return home with the rich prize he had brought from the Indian seas and the coast of Africa. In mean time, he lay there in the Delaware Bay, waiting for a reply. Before he left, he turned the whole of Tom Chist's life. Percy Turvey was something that he brought ashore. By that time, Tom Chist had grown into a strong-limbed, thick-jointed boy of fourteen or fifteen years of age. It was a miserable dog's life he lived with old Matt Aramson. For the old fisherman was in his cups more than half the time, and when he was so there was hardly a day past that he did not give Tom a curse or a buffet or, like is not, an actual beating. One would have thought that such treatment would have broken the spirit of the poor little family, but it had just the opposite effect upon Tom Chist, who was one of your stubborn, sturdy, stiff-willed fellows who only grow harder and more tough the more they are ill-treated. It had been a long time now since he had made any outcry or complaint at the hard usage he suffered from old Matt. At such times he would shut his teeth and bare whatever came to him, until sometimes the half-drunken old man would be driven almost mad by his stubborn silence. Maybe he would stop in the midst of the beating he was administering and grinding his teeth would cry out, Why ye say not? Why ye say not? Well then I'll see if I can't make ye say not. When things had reached such a pass as this, Molly would generally interfere to protect her foster son, and then she and Tom would together fight the old man until they had wrenched the stick or strap out of his hand. Then old Matt would chase them out of doors and around and around the house for maybe half an hour until his anger was cool, when he would go back again and for a time the storm would be over. Besides his foster mother, Tom Chist had a very good friend in Parsons Jones, who used to come over every now and then to Abramson's hut upon the chance of getting a half-dozen fish for breakfast. He always had a kind word or two for Tom, who during the winter evenings would go over to the good man's house to learn his letters and to read and write and cipher a little. So that by now he was able to spell the words out of the Bible and the Almanac, and knew enough to change tuppence into four haypennies. This is the sort of boy Tom Chist was, and this is the sort of life he led. In the late spring or early summer of 1699, Captain Kid's sloop sailed into the mouth of the Delaware Bay and changed the whole fortune of his life. And this is how you come to the story of Captain Kid's treasure box. End of sub-chapter one. Sub-chapter two. Old Matt Abramson kept the flat bottom boat in which he went fishing some distance down the shore, and in the neighborhood of the old wreck that had been sunk on the shoals. This was the usual fishing ground of the settlers, and here Old Matt's boat generally lay drawn up on the sand. There had been a thunderstorm that afternoon, and Tom had gone down the beach to bail out the boat in readiness for the morning's fishing. It was full moonlight now, as he was returning, and the night sky was full of floating clouds. Now and then there was a dull flash to the westward, and once a muttering growl of thunder, promising another storm to come. All that day, the pirate sloop had been laying just off the shore back of the capes, and now Tom Chist could see the sails glimmering paledly in the moonlight, spread for drying after the storm. He was walking up the shore homeward when he became aware that at some distance ahead of him, there was a ship's boat drawn up on the little narrow beach, and a group of men clustered about it. He hurried forward with a good deal of curiosity to see who had landed, but it was not until he had come close to them that he could distinguish who and what they were. Then he knew that it must be a party who had come off the pirate sloop. They had evidently just landed, and two men were lifting out a chest from the boat. One of them was a negro, naked to the waist, and the other was a white man in his shirt sleeves, wearing petticoat britches, a Monterey cap upon his head, a red bandana handkerchief around his neck, and gold earrings in his ears. He had a long plated cue hanging down his back, and a great sheath knife dangling from his side. Another man, evidently the captain of the party, stood at a little distance as they lifted the chest out of the boat. He had a cane in one hand and a lighted lantern in the other, although the moon was shining as bright as day. He wore jack boots and a handsome laced coat, and he had a long drooping mustache that curled down below his chin. He wore a fine feathered hat, and his long black hair hung down upon his shoulders. All this Tom Chist could see in the moonlight that glinted and twinkled upon the gilt buttons of his coat. They were so busy lifting the chest from the boat that at first they did not observe that Tom Chist had come up and was standing there. It was the white man with the long plated cue and the gold earrings that spoke to him. Boy, what do you want here, boy? He said in a rough horse voice, where do you come from? And then, dropping his end of the chest and without giving Tom time to answer, he pointed off down the beach and said, you'd better be going about your own business if you know what's good for you, and don't you come back or you'll find what you don't want waiting for you. Tom saw in a glance that the pirates were all looking at him, and then, without saying a word, he turned and walked away. The man who had spoken to him followed him threateningly for some little distance as though to see that he had gone away as he was bitten to do. But presently he stopped, and Tom hurried on alone until the boat and the crew and all were dropped away behind and lost in the moonlight night. Then he himself stopped also and looked back once he had come. There had been something very strange in the appearance of the men he had just seen, something very mysterious in their actions, and he wondered what it all meant and what they were going to do. He stood for a little while, thus looking and listening. He could see nothing and could hear only the sound of distant talking. What were they doing on the lonely shore thus at night? Then, following a sudden impulse, he turned and cut off across the sand hummocks, scooting around inland, but keeping pretty close to the shore, his object being to spy upon them and to watch what they were about from the back of the low sand hills that fronted the beach. He had gone along some distance in his circuitous return when he became aware of the sound of voices that seemed to be drawing closer to him as he came toward the speakers. He stopped and stood listening, and instantly as he stopped, the voices stopped also. He crouched there silently in the bright, glimmering moonlight, surrounded by the silent stretches of sand and the stillness seemed to press upon him like a heavy hand. Then suddenly the sound of a man's voice began again and as Tom listened, he could hear someone slowly counting. Ninety-one, the voice began, ninety-two, ninety-three, ninety-four, ninety-five, ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred, one hundred and one. The slow monotonous count coming nearer and nearer, one hundred and two, one hundred and three, one hundred and four, and so on in its monotonous reckoning. Suddenly he saw three heads appear above the sand hill, so close to him that he crouched down quickly with a keen thrill, close beside the hummock near which he stood. His first fear was that they might have seen him in the moonlight, but they had not, and his heart rose again as the counting voice went steadily on. One hundred and twenty, it was saying, and twenty-one, and twenty-two, and twenty-three, and twenty-four, and then he who was counting came out from behind the little sandy rise into the white and open level of shimmering brightness. It was the man with the cane whom Tom had seen some time before, the captain of the party who had landed. He carried his cane under his arm now and was holding his lantern close to something that he held in his hand, and upon which he looked narrowly as he walked with a slow and measured tread in a perfectly straight line across the sand, counting each step as he took it, and twenty-five, and twenty-six, and twenty-seven, and twenty-eight, and twenty-nine, and thirty. Behind him walked two other figures. One was the half-naked negro, the other the man with the plated cue and the earrings, whom Tom had seen lifting the chest out of the boat. Now they were carrying the heavy box between them, laboring through the sand with shuffling tread as they bore it onward. As he who was counting pronounced the word thirty, the two men set the chest down on the sand with a grunt, the white man panting and blowing and wiping his sleeve across his forehead, and immediately he who counted took out a slip of paper and marked something down upon it. They stood there for a long time, during which Tom lay behind the sand hammock watching them, and for a while the silence was uninterrupted. In the perfect stillness, Tom could hear the washing of the little waves beating upon the distant beach and once the faraway sound of a laugh from one of those who stood by the ship's boat. One, two, three minutes passed, and then the men picked up the chest and started on again, and then again the other man began his counting. Thirty and one, and thirty and two, and thirty and three, and thirty and four. He walked straight across the level open, still looking intently at that which he held in his hand, and thirty and five, and thirty and six, and thirty and seven, and so on until the three figures disappeared in the little hollow between the two sand hills on the opposite side of the open, and still Tom could hear the sound of the counting voice in the distance. Just as they disappeared behind the hill, there was a sudden faint flash of light, and by and by, as Tom lay listening to the counting, he heard, after a long interval, a faraway muffled rumble of distant thunder. He waited for a while and then arose and stepped to the top of the sand hammock behind which he had been laying. He looked all about him, but there was no one else to be seen. Then he stepped down from the hammock and followed in the direction which the pirate captain and the two men carrying the chest had gone. He crept along cautiously, stopping now and then to make sure that he still heard the counting voice, and when it ceased, he lay down upon the sand and waited until it began again. Presently, so following the pirates, he saw the three figures again in the distance, and, skirting around back of a hill of sand covered with coarse sedge grass, he came to where he overlooked a little open-level space gleaming white in the moonlight. The three had been crossing the level of sand and were now not more than 25 paces from him. They had again set down the chest, upon which the white man with the long queue and the gold earrings had seated to rest himself, the negro standing close beside him, the moon shone as bright as day and full upon his face. It was looking directly at Tom's chest, every line as keen cut with white lights and black shadows as though it had been carved in ivory and jet. He sat perfectly motionless, and Tom drew back with a start, almost thinking he had been discovered. He lay silent, his heart beating heavily in his throat, but there was no alarm, and presently he heard the counting begin again. And when he looked once more, he saw they were going away straight across the little open. A soft, sliding hillock of sand lay directly in front of them. They did not turn aside, but went straight over it, the leader helping himself up the sandy slope with his cane, still counting and still keeping his eyes fixed upon that, which he held in his hand. So Tom followed them cautiously until they had gone almost half a mile inland. When next he saw them clearly, it was from a little sandy rise, which looked down like the crest of a bowl upon the floor of sand below. Upon this smooth white floor, the moon beat with almost dazzling brightness. The white man who had helped to carry the chest was now kneeling, busy at some work, though what it was Tom at first could not see. He was whittling the point of a stick into a long wooden peg, and when by and by he had finished what he was about, he arose and stepped to where he, who seemed to be the captain, had stuck his cane upright into the ground as though to mark some particular spot. He drew the cane out of the sand, thrusting the stick down in its stead. Then he drove the long peg down with a wooden mallet, which the negro handed to him. The sharp wrapping of the mallet upon the top of the peg sounded loud in the perfect stillness, and Tom lay watching and wondering what it all meant. The man with quick repeated blows drove the peg farther and farther down into the sand until it showed only two or three inches above the surface. As he finished his work, there was another faint flash of light, and by and by another smothered rumble of thunder. And Tom, as he looked out toward the westward, saw the silver rim of the round and sharply outlined thunder cloud, rising slowly up into the sky and pushing the other and broken drifting clouds before it. The two white men were now stooping over the peg, the negro man watching them. Then presently, the man with the cane started straight away from the peg, carrying the end of a measuring line with him, the other end of which the man with the plated cue held against the top of the peg. When the pirate captain had reached the end of the measuring line, he marked a cross upon the sand, and then again they measured out another stretch of space. So they measured a distance five times over, and then from where Tom lay, he could see the man with the cue drive another peg just at the foot of a sloping rise of sand that swept up beyond into a tall white dune, marked sharp and clear against the night sky behind. As soon as the man with the plated cue had driven the second peg into the ground, they began measuring again. And so still measuring disappeared in another direction which took them in behind the sand dune where Tom no longer could see what they were doing. The negro still sat by the chest where the two had left him, and so bright was the moonlight that from where he lay, Tom could see the glint of it twinkling in the whites of his eyeballs. Presently from behind the hill there came, for the third time, the sharp wrapping sound of the mallet driving still another peg. And then after a while, the two pirates emerged from behind the sloping whiteness into the space of moonlight again. They came direct to where the chest lay, and the white man and the black man lifting it once more, they walked straight away across the level of open sand and so on behind the edge of the hill and out of Tom's sight. End of sub-chapter two, sub-chapter three. Tom Chist could no longer see what the pirates were doing. Neither did he dare to cross over the open space of sand that now lay between them and him. He lay there speculating as to what they were about. And meantime, the storm cloud was rising higher and higher above the horizon with louder and louder mutterings of thunder following each dull flash from out of the cloudy cavernous depths. In the silence he could hear an occasional click as of some iron implement, and he opined that the pirates were burying the chest. Though just where they were at work he could neither see nor tell. Still he lay there watching and listening, and by and by a puff of warm air blew across the sand and a thumping tumble of louder thunder leaped out from the belly of the storm cloud which every minute was coming nearer and nearer. Still Tom Chist lay watching. Suddenly, almost unexpectedly, the three figures reappeared from behind the sand hill, the pirate captain leading the way and the negro and white man following close behind him. They had gone about halfway across the white sandy level between the hill and the hummock behind which Tom Chist lay when the white man stopped and bent over as though to tie his shoe. This brought the negro a few steps in front of his companion. That which then followed happened so suddenly, so unexpectedly, so swiftly that Tom Chist had hardly time to realize what it all meant before it was over. As the negro passed him, the white man arose suddenly and silently erect, and Tom Chist saw the white moonlight glint upon the blade of a great dirt knife which he now held in his hand. He took one, two silent cat-like steps behind the unsuspecting negro. Then there was a sweeping flash of the blade in the pallid light and a blow, the thump of which Tom could distinctly hear even from where he lay stretched out upon the sand. There was an instant echoing yell from the black man who ran stumbling forward, who stopped, who regained his footing and then stood for an instant as though rooted to the spot. Tom had distinctly seen the knife enter his back and even thought that he had seen the glint of the point as it came out from the breast. Meantime, the pirate captain had stopped and now stood with his hand, resting upon his cane, looking impassively on. Then the black man started to run. The white man stood for a while glaring after him. Then he too started after his victim upon the run. The black man was not very far from Tom when he staggered and fell. He tried to rise, then fell forward again and lay at length. At that instant, the first edge of the cloud cut across the moon and there was a sudden darkness. But in the silence, Tom heard the sound of another blow and a groan and then presently a voice calling to the pirate captain that it was all over. He saw the dim form of the captain crossing the level sand and then as the moon sailed out from behind the cloud, he saw the white man standing over a black figure that lay motionless upon the sand. Then Tom Chis scrambled up and ran away, plunging down into the hollow of sand that lay in the shadows below. Over the next rise he ran and down again into the next black hollow and so on over the sliding, shifting sand, panting and gasping. It seemed to him that he could hear footsteps following and in the terror that possessed him, he almost expected every instant to feel the cold knife blades slide between his own ribs and such a thrust from behind as he had seen given to the poor black man. So he ran on like one in a nightmare. His feet grew heavy like lead. He panted and gasped. His breath came hot and dry in his throat. But still he ran and ran until at last he found himself in front of old Matt Haveranson's cabin, gasping, panting and sobbing for breath. His knees relaxed and his thighs trembling with weakness. As he opened the door and dashed into the darkened cabin for both Matt and Molly were long ago asleep in bed, there was a flash of light and even as he slammed to the door behind him, there was an instant peel of thunder, heavy as though a great weight had been dropped upon the roof of the sky so that the doors and windows of the cabin rattled. End of sub chapter three. End of section eight. Section nine of Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Barry Eads. Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle. Compiled by Merle Johnson. Section nine, Tom Chist and the Treasure Box, part two. Sub chapter four. Then Tom Chist crept to bed, trembling, shuttering, bathed in sweat, his heart beating like a trip hammer and his brain dizzy from that long terror inspired race through the soft sand in which he had striven to outstrip he knew not what pursuing horror. For a long, long time he lay awake, trembling and chattering with nervous chills. And when he did fall asleep, it was only to drop into monstrous dreams in which he once again saw ever enacted with various grotesque variations, the tragic drama which his waking eyes had beheld the night before. Then came the dawning of the broad, wet daylight and before the rising of the sun, Tom was up and out of doors to find the young day dripping with the rain of overnight. His first act was to climb the nearest sand hill and to gaze out toward the offing where the pirate ship had been the day before. It was no longer there. Soon afterward, Matt Abramson came out of the cabin and he called to Tom to go and get a bite to eat for it was time for them to be away fishing. All that morning, the recollection of the night before hung over Tom's chest like a great cloud of boating trouble. It filled the confined area of the little boat and spread over the entire wide spaces of sky and sea that surrounded them. Not for a moment was it lifted. Even when he was hauling in his wet and dripping line with a struggling fish at the end of it, a recurrent memory of what he had seen would suddenly come upon him and he would groan in spirit at the recollection. He looked at Matt Abramson's leathery face at his lantern jaws cavernously and stolidly chewing at a tobacco leaf and it seemed monstrous to him that the old man should be so unconscious of the black cloud that wrapped them all about. When the boat reached the shore again, he leaped scrambling to the beach and as soon as his dinner was eaten, he hurried away to find the Dominique Jones. He ran all the way from Abramson's hut to the Parsons house, hardly stopping once, and when he knocked at the door, he was panting and sobbing for breath. The good man was sitting at the back kitchen doorstop, smoking his long pipe of tobacco out into the sunlight while his wife within was rattling about among the pans and dishes in preparation of their supper, of which a strong, porky smell already filled the air. Then Tom Chist told his story, panting, hurrying, tumbling one word over another in his haste, and Parsons Jones listened, breaking every now and then into an ejaculation of wonder. The light of his pipe went out and the bowl turned cold. And I don't see why they should have killed the poor black man, said Tom as he finished his narrative. Why, that is very easy enough to understand, said the good Reverend man. It was a treasure box, they buried. In his agitation, Mr. Jones had risen from his seat and was now stumping up and down, puffing at his empty tobacco pipe as though it were still a light. A treasure box, cried out Tom. I, a treasure box. And that was why they killed the poor black man. He was the only one, do you see, besides the two who knew the place where it was hid. And now that they've killed him out of the way, there's nobody but themselves knows. The villains, tut tut, look at that now. In his excitement, the Domine had snapped the stem of his tobacco pipe into. Why then, said Tom, if that is so, tis indeed a wicked bloody treasure and fit to bring a curse upon anybody who finds it. Tis more like to bring a curse upon the soul who buried it, said Parsons Jones. And it may be a blessing to him who finds it. But tell me, Tom, do you think you could find a place again where it was hid? I can't tell that, said Tom. It was all in among the sand humps, do you see. And it was at night into the bargain. Maybe we could find the marks of their feet in the sand, he added. Tis not likely, said the Reverend Gentleman, for the storm last night would have washed all that away. I could find the place, said Tom, where the boat was drawn up on the beach. Why then, that's something to start from, Tom, said his friend. If we can find that, then maybe we can find whether they went from there. If I was certain it was a treasure box, cried out Tom, I would rake over every foot of sand betwixt here and henl open to find it. Would be like hunting for a pin in a haystack, said the Reverend Hilary Jones. As Tom walked away home, it seemed as though a tons weight of gloom had been rolled away from his soul. The next day, he and Parson Jones were to go treasure hunting together. It seemed to Tom as though he could hardly wait for the time to come. End of sub-chapter four. Sub-chapter five. The next afternoon, Parson Jones and Tom Chist started off together upon the expedition that made Tom's fortune forever. Tom carried a spade over his shoulder and the Reverend Gentleman walked along beside him with his cane. As they jogged along up the beach, they talked together about the only thing they could talk about, the treasure box. And how big did you say it was? Quote the good gentleman. About so long, said Tom Chist, measuring off upon the spade. And about so wide and this steep. And what if it should be full of money, Tom? Said the Reverend Gentleman, swinging his cane around and around in wide circles in the excitement of the thought as he strode along briskly. Suppose it should be full of money, what then? Buy Moses, said Tom Chist, hurrying to keep up with his friend. I'd buy a ship for myself, I would, and I'd trade to Inji and to Chiny in my own boat, I would. Suppose the Chist was all full of money, sir, and suppose we should find it. Would there be enough in it? He is supposed to buy a ship? To be sure there would be enough, Tom, enough and to spare and a good big lump over. And if I find it to his mind to keep, is it, and no mistake? Why, to be sure it would be yours, cried out the parson in a loud voice, to be sure it would be yours. He knew nothing of the law, but the doubt of the question began at once to ferment in his brain, and he strode along in silence for a while. Who else would it be but yours if you find it? He burst out. Can you tell me that? If ever I have a ship of my own, said Tom Chist, and if ever I sail to Inji and her, I'll fetch ye back the best Chist of tea, sir, that ever was fetched from Coach and Chiny. Parson Jones burst out laughing. Thank ye, Tom, he said, and I'll thank ye again when I get my Chist of tea. But tell me, Tom, did Stow ever hear of the farmer girl who counted her chickens before they were hatched? It was thus they talked as they hurried along up the beach together, and so came to a place at last where Tom stopped short and stood looking about him. It was just here, he said. I saw the boat last night. I know it was here, for I mind me of that bit of rec yonder, and that there was a tall stake drove in the sand just where Yon stake stands. Parson Jones put on his spectacles and went over to the stake toward which Tom pointed. As soon as he had looked at it carefully, he called out, Why, Tom, this has been just drove down into the sand. This is a brand new stake of wood, and the pirates must have said it here themselves as a mark, just as they drove the pegs you spoke about down into the sand. Tom came over and looked at the stake. It was a stout piece of oak nearly two inches thick. It had been shaped with some care, and the top of it had been painted red. He shook the stake and tried to move it, but it had been driven or planted so deeply into the sand that he could not stir it. I, sir, he said, it must have been set here for a mark, for I am sure it was not here yesterday or the day before. He stood looking about him to see if there were other signs of the pirates' presence. At some little distance there was the corner of something white sticking out of the sand. He could see that it was a scrap of paper, and pointing to it, calling out, Yonder is a piece of paper, sir. I wonder if they left that behind them. It was a miraculous chance that placed that paper there. There was only an inch of it showing, and if it had not been for Tom's sharp eyes, it would certainly have been overlooked and passed by. The next windstorm would have covered it up, and all that afterward happened never would have occurred. Look, sir, he said, as he struck the sand from it, it hath writing on it. Let me see it, said Parsson Jones. He adjusted the spectacles a little more firmly astride of his nose as he took the paper in his hand and began conning it. What's all, what's all this? He said, a whole lot of figures and nothing else. And then he read aloud, Mark, S S W S by S. What do you suppose that means, Tom? I don't know, sir, said Tom, but maybe we can understand it better if you read on. Tis all a great lot of figures, said Parsson Jones, without a grain of meaning in them so far as I can see, unless they be sailing directions. And then he began reading again, Mark, S S W by S. 40, 72, 91, 130, 151, 177, 202, 232, 256, 271, DSC, it must be sailing directions. 299, 335, 362, 386, 415, 446, 469, 491, 522, 544, 571, 598. What a lot of them there be. 626, 652, 676, 695, 724, 851, 876, 905, 940, 967. Peg, S E by E, 269 foot. Peg, S S W by S. 427 foot. Peg, dig to the west of this 6 foot. What's that about a Peg, exclaimed Tom? What's that about a Peg? And then there's something about digging, too. It was as though a sunlight began shining into his brain. He felt himself growing quickly very excited. Read that over again, sir, he cried. Why, sir, you remember I told you they drove a Peg into the sand and don't they say to dig close to it? Read it over again, sir, read it over again. Peg, said the good gentleman, to be sure it was about a Peg. Let's look again. Yes, here it is. Peg, S E by E, 269 foot. I cried out Tom just again in great excitement. Don't you remember what I told you, sir? 269 foot? Sure, that must be what I saw measuring with the line. Parson Jones had now caught the flame of excitement that was blazing up so strongly in Tom's breast. He felt as though some wonderful thing was about to happen to them. To be sure, to be sure, he called out in a great big voice. And then they measured out 427 foot south-south-west by south and they then drove another Peg and then they buried the box 6 foot to the west of it. Why, Tom Chist, if we've read this are right, thy fortune is made. Tom Chist stood staring straight at the old gentleman's excited face and seeing nothing but it in all the bright infinity of sunshine. Were they indeed about to find the treasure chest? He felt the sun very hot upon his shoulders and he heard the harsh insistent jarring of a turn that hovered and circled with forked tail and sharp white wings in the sunlight just above their heads, but all the time he stood staring into the good old gentleman's face. It was Parson Jones who first spoke. But what do all these figures mean? And Tom observed how the paper shook and rustled in the tremor of excitement that shook his hand. He raised the paper to the focus of his spectacles and began to read again. Mark, 40, 72, 91. Mark! cried out Tom, almost screaming. Why, that must mean the stake yonder! That must be the mark! And he pointed to the oaken stick with its red tip blazing against the white shimmer of sand behind it. And the 40, 72, and 91. cried the old gentleman in a voiced equally shrill. Why, that must mean the number of steps the pirate was counting when you heard him. To be sure that's what they mean, cried Tom Chist. That is it and it can be nothing else. Oh, come, sir, come, sir, let us make haste and find it. Stay, stay! said the good gentleman, holding up his hand. And again, Tom Chist noticed how it trembled and shook. His voice was steady enough, though very hoarse, but his hand shook and trembled as though with a palsy. Stay, stay! First of all, we must follow these measurements. And tis a marvelous thing, he croaked after a little pause, how this paper ever came to be here. Maybe it was blown here by the storm, suggested Tom Chist. Like enough, like enough, said Parsons Jones. Like enough, after the wretches had buried the chest and killed the poor black man, they were so buffeted and bowed about by the storm that it was shook out of the man's pocket and thus blew away from him without his knowing ought of it. But let us find a box! cried out Tom Chist, flaming with his excitement. Aye, aye! said the good man. Only stay a little, my boy, until we make sure what we're about. I've got my pocket compass here, but we must have something to measure off the feet when we have found the peg. You run across to Tom Brooks's house and fetch that measuring rod he used to lay out his new buyer. While you're gone, I'll pace off the distance marked on the paper with my pocket compass here. End of Sub Chapter 5 Sub Chapter 6 Tom Chist was gone for almost an hour, though he ran nearly all the way and back, upborn as on the wings of the wind. When he returned panting, Parsons Jones was nowhere to be seen. But Tom saw his footsteps leading away inland and he followed the scuffling marks in the smooth surface across the sand humps and down into the hollows, and by and by found the good gentleman in a spot he at once knew as soon as he laid his eyes upon it. It was the open space where the pirates had driven their first peg and where Tom Chist had afterward seen them kill the poor black man. Tom Chist gazed around as though expecting to see some sign of the tragedy. But the space was as smooth and as undisturbed as a floor, excepting where, midway across it, Parsons Jones, who was now stooping over something on the ground, had trampled it all around about. When Tom Chist saw him, he was still bending over, scraping away from something he had found. It was the first peg. Inside of half an hour they had found the second and third pegs and Tom Chist stripped off his coat and began digging like mad down into the sand, Parsons Jones standing over him watching him. The sun was sloping well toward the west when the blade of Tom Chist's spade struck upon something hard. If it had been his own heart that he had hit in the sand, his breath could hardly have thrilled more sharply. It was the treasure box. Parsons Jones himself leaped down into the hole and began scraping away the sand with his hands as though he had gone crazy. At last, with some difficulty, they tugged and hauled the chest up out of the sand to the surface, where it lay covered all over with the grit that clung to it. It was securely locked and fastened with a padlock and it took a good many blows with the blade of the spade to burst the bolt. Parsons Jones himself lifted the lid. Tom Chist leaned forward and gazed down into the open box. He would not have been surprised to have seen it filled full of yellow, gold and bright jewels. It was filled half full of books and papers and half full of canvas bags tied safely and securely around and around with cords of string. Parsons Jones lifted out one of the bags and it jingled as he did so. It was full of money. He cut the string and with trembling shaking hands handed the bag to Tom, who, in an ecstasy of wonder and dizzy with delight, poured out with swimming sight upon the coat spread on the ground, a cataract of shining silver money that rang and twinkled and jingled as it fell in a shining heap upon the coarse cloth. Parsons Jones held up both hands into the air and Tom stared at what he saw, wondering whether it was all so and whether he was really awake. It seemed to him as though he was in a dream. There were two and twenty bags in all in the chest. Ten of them full of silver money, eight of them full of gold money, three of them full of gold dust and one small bag with jewels wrapped up in red cotton and paper. "'Tis enough!' cried out Parsons Jones, "'To make us both rich men as long as we live!' The burning summer sun, though sloping in the sky, beat down upon them as hot as fire, but neither of them noticed it. Neither did they notice hunger or thirst nor fatigue, but sat there as though in a trance, with the bags of money scattered on the sand around them, a great pile of money heaped upon the coat and the open chest beside them. It was an hour of sundown before Parsons Jones had begun fairly to examine the books and papers in the chest. Of the three books, two were evidently log books of the pirates who had been lying off the mouth of the Delaware Bay all this time. The other book was written in Spanish and was evidently the log book of some captured prize. It was then, sitting there upon the sand, the good old gentleman reading in his high, crackling voice that they first learned from the bloody records in those two books who it was who had been lying inside the tape all this time and that it was the famous Captain Kid. Every now and then the reverend gentleman would stop to explain, oh, the bloody wretch, or oh, the desperate, cruel villains, and then would go on reading again a scrap here and a scrap there. And all the while Tom Chis sat and listened, every now and then reaching out furtively and touching the heap of money still lying upon the coat. One might be inclined to wonder why Captain Kid had kept those bloody records. He had probably laid them away because they so incriminated many of the great people of the colony of New York that with the books in evidence, it would have been impossible to bring the pirate to justice without dragging a dozen or more fine gentlemen into the dock along with him. If he could have kept them in his own possession, they would doubtless have been a great weapon of defense to protect him from the gallows. Indeed, when Captain Kid was finally brought to conviction and hung, he was not accused of his piracies, but of striking a mutinous semen upon the head with a bucket and accidentally killing him. The authorities did not dare try him for piracy. He was really hung because he was a pirate, and we know that it was the log books that Tom Chis brought to New York that did the business for him. He was accused and convicted of manslaughter for killing of his own ship carpenter with a bucket. So Parson Jones, sitting there in the slanting light, read through these terrible records of piracy, and Tom, with the pile of gold and silver money beside him, sat and listened to him. What a spectacle if anyone had come upon them, but they were alone with the vast arc of sky empty above them and the wide white stretch of sand a desert around them. The sun sank lower and lower until there was only time to glance through the other papers in the chest. They were nearly all Goldsmith's bills of exchange drawn in favor of certain of the most prominent merchants of New York. Parson Jones, as he read over the names, knew of nearly all the gentlemen by hearsay. I, here was this gentleman. He thought that name would be among them. What? Here is Mr. So-and-so. Well, if all they say is true, the villain has robbed one of his own best friends. I wonder, he said, why the Rhett should have hidden these papers so carefully away with the other treasures, for they could do him no good. Then, answering his own question, like enough because these will give him a hold over the gentleman to whom they are drawn so that he can make a good bargain for his own neck before he gives the bills back to their owners. I tell you what it is, Tom, he continued. It is you yourself shall go to New York and bargain for the return of these papers to will be as good as another fortune to you. The majority of the bills were drawn in favor of one Richard Chillingworth, Esquire. And he is, said Parson Jones, one of the richest men in the province of New York. You shall go to him with the news of what we have found. When shall I go? said Tom Chist. You shall go upon the very first boat we can catch, said the Parson. He had turned, still holding the bills in his hand, and was now fingering over the pile of money that yet lay tumbled about upon the coat. I wonder, Tom, said he, if you could spare me a score or so of these doubloons. You shall have fifty score if you choose, said Tom, bursting with gratitude and with generosity in his newly found treasure. You are as fine a lad as ever I saw, Tom, said the Parson, and I'll thank you to the last day of my life. Tom scooped up a double handful of silver money. Take it, sir, he said, and you may have as much more as you want of it. He poured it into the dish that the good man made of his hands, and the Parson made a motion as though to empty it into his pocket. Then he stopped as though a sudden doubt had occurred to him. I don't know that it is fit for me to take this pirate money, after all, he said. But you are welcome to it, said Tom. Still the Parson hesitated. Nay, he burst out. I'll not take it, to his blood money. And as he spoke he chucked the whole double handful into the now empty chest, then arose and dusted the sand from his britches. Then, with a great deal of bustling energy, he helped to tie the bags again and put them all back into the chest. They reburied the chest in the place once they had taken it, and then the Parson folded the precious paper of directions, placed it carefully in his wallet and his wallet in his pocket. Tom, he said for the twentieth time, your fortune has been made this day. And Tom chist, as he rattled in his britches pocket the half dozen doubloons he had kept out of his treasure, felt that what his friend had said was true. As the two went back homeward across the level space of sand, Tom chist suddenly stopped stock still and stood looking about him. Just here, he said, digging his heel down into the sand, that they killed the poor black man. And here he lies buried for all time, said Parson Jones, and as he spoke he dug his cane down into the sand. Tom chist shuddered. He would not have been surprised if the feral of the cane had struck something soft beneath that level surface. But it did not, nor was any sign of that tragedy ever seen again. For, whether the pirates had carried away what they had done and buried it elsewhere, whether the storm in blowing the sand had completely leveled off and hidden all sign of that tragedy where it was enacted, certain it is that it never came to sight again, at least so far as Tom chist and the Reverend Hillary Jones ever knew. End of Sub Chapter 6 Sub Chapter 7 This is the story of the Treasure Box. All that remains now is to conclude the story of Tom chist and to tell of what came of him in the end. He did not go back again to live with old Matt Abramson. Parsons Jones had now taken charge of him and his fortunes, and Tom did not have to go back to the fisherman's hut. Old Abramson talked a great deal about it and would come in his cups and harang good Parsons Jones, making a vast protestation of what he would do to Tom if he ever caught him for running away. But Tom on all these occasions kept carefully out of his way and nothing came of the old man's threatenings. Tom used to go over to see his foster mother now and then, but always when the old man was from home. And Molly Abramson used to warn him to keep out of her father's way. He's in as vile a humor as ever I see Tom, she said. He sits sulking all day long and to my belief he'd kill ye if he caught ye. Of course Tom said nothing even to her about the treasure and he and the Reverend gentlemen kept the knowledge thereof to themselves. About three weeks later, he had to get him shipped aboard of a vessel bound for New Yorktown and a few days later Tom Chist landed at that place. He had never been in such a town before and he could not sufficiently wonder and marvel at the number of brick houses at the multitude of people coming and going along the fine hard earthen sidewalk at the shops and the stores where goods hung in the windows and most of all the fortifications and the battery at the point at the rows of threatening cannon at the scarlet coated sentries pacing up and down the ramparts. All this was very wonderful and so were the clustered boats riding at anchor in the harbor. It was like a new world, so different was it from the sand hills and the sedgy levels of head and open. Tom Chist took up his lodgings at a coffee house near to the town hall and thence he sent by the post boy a letter written by Parsons Jones to Master Chillingworth. In a little while the boy returned with a message asking Tom to come up to Mr. Chillingworth's house that afternoon at two o'clock. Tom went thither with a great deal of trepidation and his heart fell away altogether when he found it a fine, grand brick house three stories high and with wrought iron letters across the front. The counting house was in the same building but Tom, because of Mr. Jones's letter was conducted directly into the parlor where the great rich man was awaiting his coming. He was sitting in a leather covered arm chair smoking a pipe of tobacco and with a bottle of fine old Madeira close to his elbow. Tom had not had a chance to buy a new suit of clothes yet and so he cut no very fine figure in the rough dress he had brought with him from Henlopen. Nor did Mr. Chillingworth seem to think very highly of his appearance for he sat looking sideways at Tom as he smoked. Well, my lad, he said, and what is this great thing you have to tell me that is so mightily wonderful? Well, that is his name, Mr. Jones's letter and now I am ready to hear what you have to say. But if he thought but little of his visitor's appearance at first he soon changed his sentiments toward him for Tom had not spoken twenty words when Mr. Chillingworth his whole aspect changed. He straightened himself up in his seat laid aside his pipe pushed away his glass of Madeira and bade Tom take a chair. He listened without a word as Tom Chiss told of the buried treasure that he had seen the poor Negro murdered and of how he and Parson Jones had recovered the chest again. Only once did Mr. Chillingworth interrupt the narrative and to think, he cried, that the villain this very day walks about New York town as though he were an honest man ruffling it with the best of us. But if we can only get hold of these log books you speak of go on, tell me more of this. When Tom Chiss's narrative was ended Mr. Chillingworth's bearing as daylight is from dark. He asked a thousand questions all in the most polite and gracious tone imaginable and not only urged a glass of his fine old Madeira upon Tom but asked him to stay to supper. There was nobody to be there he said but his wife and daughter. Tom, all in a panic at the very thought of the two ladies sturdily refused to stay even for the dish of tea Mr. Chillingworth offered him. He did not know that he was destined to stay there as long as he should live. And now, said Mr. Chillingworth, tell me about yourself. I have nothing to tell, Your Honor, said Tom except that I was washed up out of the sea. Washed up out of the sea? exclaimed Mr. Chillingworth. Why? How was that? Come, begin at the beginning and tell me all. Thereupon Tom Chiss did as he was bitten beginning at the very beginning and telling everything just as Molly Abramson had often told it to him. As he continued, Mr. Chillingworth's interest changed into an appearance of stronger and stronger excitement. Suddenly he jumped up out of his chair and began to walk up and down the room. Stop! Stop! he cried out at last in the midst of something Tom was saying. Stop! Stop! Tell me. Do you know the name of the vessel that was wrecked and from which you were washed ashore? I've heard it said, said Tom Chiss, it was the Bristol merchant. I knew it! I knew it! exclaimed the great man in a loud voice, flinging his hands up into the air. I felt it was so the moment you began the story. But tell me this, was there nothing found with you with a mark or a name upon it? There was a kerchief, said Tom, marked with a T and a C. Theodosia, Chillingworth cried out the merchant. I knew it! I knew it! Heavens, to think of anything so wonderful happening as this. Boy, boy, does thou know who art? Thou art my own brother's son. His name was Oliver Chillingworth, and he was my partner in business, and thou art his son. Then he ran out into the entryway, shouting and calling for his wife and daughter to come. So Tom Chist, or Thomas Chillingworth, as he now was to be called, did stay to supper after all. This is the story, and I hope you may like it, for Tom Chist became rich and great, as was to be supposed, and he married his pretty cousin, Theodosia, who had been named for his own mother, drowned in the Bristol merchant. He did not forget his friends, but had Parsons Jones brought to New York to live. As to Molly and Matt Abramson, they both enjoyed a pension of ten pounds a year for as long as they lived. For now, that all was well with him, Tom bore no grudge against the old fisherman for all the drubbings he had suffered. The treasure chest was brought on to New York, and if Tom Chist did not get all the money there was in it, as Parsons Jones had opined he would, he got at least a good big lump of it. And it is my belief that those log books did more to get Captain Kidd arrested in Boston Town and hanged in London than anything else that was brought up against him. End of sub Chapter 7 End of Section 9 Section 10 of Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Barry Eads Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle, compiled by Merle Johnson Jack Ballester's Fortunes, Part 1 We, of these times, protected as we are by the laws and by the number of people about us, can hardly comprehend such a life as that of the American colonies in the early part of the 18th century, when it was possible for a pirate, like Captain Teach, known as Blackbeard to exist, and for the governor and the secretary of the province in which he lived, perhaps to share his plunder and to shelter and to protect him against the law. At that time, the American colonists were in general a rough, rugged people, knowing nothing of the finer things of life. They lived mostly in little settlements, separated by long distances from one another, so that they could neither make nor enforce laws to protect themselves. Each man or little group of men had to depend upon his or their own strength to keep what belonged to them, and to prevent fierce men or groups of men from seizing what did not belong to them. It is the natural disposition of everyone to get all that he can. Little children, for instance, always try to take away from others that which they want to keep it for their own. It is only by constant teaching that they learn that they must not do so, that they must not take by force what does not belong to them. So it is only by teaching and training that people learn to be honest and not to take what is not theirs. When this teaching is not sufficient to make a man learn to be honest, or when there is something in the man's nature that makes him not able to learn, then he only lacks the opportunity to seize upon what he wants, just as he would do if he were a little child. In the colonies at that time, as was just said, men were too few and scattered to protect themselves against those who had made up their minds to take by force that which they wanted. And so it was that men lived an unrestrained and lawless life, such as we of these times of better government can hardly comprehend. The usual means of commerce between province and province was by water in coasting vessels. These coasting vessels were so defenseless and the different colonial governments were so ill able to protect them that those who chose to rob them could do it almost without danger to themselves. So it was that all the western world was in those days infested with armed bands of cruising freebooters or pirates who used to stop merchant vessels and take from them what they chose. Each province in those days was ruled by a royal governor appointed by the king. Each governor at one time was free to do almost as he pleased in his own province. He was accountable only to the king and his government and England was so distant that he was really responsible almost to nobody but himself. The governors were naturally just as desirous to get rich quickly just as desirous of getting all that they could for themselves as was anybody else. Only they had been taught and had been able to learn that it was not right to be an actual pirate or robber. They wanted to be rich easily and quickly but the desire was not strong enough to lead them to dishonor themselves in their own opinion and in the opinion of others by gratifying their selfishness. They would even have stopped the pirates from doing what they did if they could but their provincial governments were too weak to prevent the freebooters from robbing merchant vessels or to punish them because the provinces had no navies and they really had no armies. Neither were there enough people living within the community to enforce the laws against those stronger and fiercer men who were not honest. After the things the pirates seized from merchant vessels were once stolen they were altogether lost. Almost never did any owner apply for them for it would be useless to do so. The stolen goods and merchandise lay in the storehouses of the pirates owner accepting the pirates themselves. The governors and secretaries of the colonies would not dishonor themselves by pirating upon merchant vessels but it did not seem so wicked after the goods were stolen and so altogether lost to take a part of that which seemed to have no owner. A child is taught that it is a very wicked thing to take for instance by force a lump of sugar from another child but when a wicked child has seized the sugar from another child and taken it around the corner and that other child from whom he has seized it has gone home crying it does not seem so wicked for the third child to take a bite of the sugar when it is offered to him even if he thinks it has been taken from someone else. It was just so no doubt that it did not seem so wicked to Governor Eden and Secretary Knight of North Carolina or to Governor Fletcher of New York or to other colonial governors of the booty that the pirates such as Blackbeard had stolen. It did not even seem very wicked to compel such pirates to give up a part of what was not theirs and which seemed to have no owner. In Governor Eden's time however the colonies had begun to be more thickly peopled and the laws had gradually become stronger and stronger to protect men in the possession of what was theirs. Governor Eden was the last of the colonial governors who had dealings with Blackbeard was almost the last of the pirates who with his banded men was savage and powerful enough to come and go as he chose among the people whom he plundered. Virginia at that time was the greatest and the richest of all the American colonies and upon the farther side of North Carolina was the province of South Carolina also strong and rich. It was these two colonies that suffered the most from Blackbeard and it began to be that the world in them could endure no longer to be plundered. The merchants and traders and others who suffered cried out loudly for protection so loudly that the governors of these provinces could not help hearing them. Governor Eden was petitioned to act against the pirates but he would do nothing for he felt very friendly toward Blackbeard just as a child who has had a taste of the stolen sugar feels friendly toward the child who gives it to him. When Blackbeard sailed up into the very heart of Virginia and seized upon and carried away the daughter of that colony's foremost people the governor of Virginia finding that the governor of North Carolina would do nothing to punish the outrage took the matter into his own hands and issued a proclamation offering a reward of 100 pounds for Blackbeard alive or dead and different sums for the other pirates who were his followers. Governor Spottiswood had the right to commission Lieutenant Maynard as he did to take down an armed force into the neighboring province and to attack the pirates in the waters of the North Carolina sounds. It was all a part of the rude and lawless condition of the colonies at the time that such a thing could have been done. The governor's proclamation against the pirates was issued upon the 11th day of November. It was read in the churches the Sunday following and was posted upon the doors of the government custom offices in lower Virginia. Lieutenant Maynard in the boats that Colonel Parker had already fitted out to go against the pirates set sail upon the 17th of the month for Ocracoke. Five days later the battle was fought. Blackbeard's loop was lying inside of Ocracoke Inlet among the shoals and sandbars when he first heard of Governor Spottiswood's proclamation. There had been a storm and a good many vessels had run out of shelter. Blackbeard knew nearly all of the captains of these vessels and it was from them that he first heard of the proclamation. He had gone aboard one of the vessels a coaster from Boston. The wind was still blowing pretty hard from the southeast. There were maybe a dozen vessels lying within the Inlet at the time and the captain of one of them was paying the Boston Skipper a visit when Blackbeard came aboard. The two captains had been talking at least when the pirate came down into the cabin, but he had heard enough of their conversation to catch its drift. Why do you stop? he said. I heard what you said. Well, what then? Do you think I mind it at all? Spottiswood is going to send his bullies down here after me. That's what you were saying. Well, what then? You don't think I'm afraid of his bullies, do you? Why, no, captain. I didn't say you was afraid, said the visiting captain. And what right has he got to send down here against me in North Carolina? I should like to ask you. He's got none at all, said the Boston captain soothingly. Won't you take a taste of Holland's captain? He's no more right to come blustering down here into Governor Eden's province than I have to come aboard of your schooner here, Tom Burley, and to carry off two or three kegs of prime Holland's for my own drinking. Captain Burley, the Boston man, laughed a loud, forced laugh. Why, captain, he said, as for two or three kegs of Holland's, you won't find that aboard. But if you'd like to have a keg of it for your own drinking, I'll send it to you and be glad enough to do so for old acquaintance's sake. But I tell you what is, captain, said the visiting Skipper to Blackbeard. They're determined to set against you this time. I tell you, captain, Governor Spotterswood hath issued a hot proclamation against you, and hath been read out in all the churches. I myself saw it posted in Yorktown upon the Custom House door and read it there myself. The Governor offers one hundred pounds for you and fifty pounds for your officers and twenty pounds each for your men. Well, then, said Blackbeard, holding up his glass. Here, I wish him good luck, and when they get their hundred pounds from me, they'll be in a poor way to spend it. As for the Holland's, said he, turning to captain Burley, I know what you've got aboard here and what you haven't. Do you suppose you can blind me? Very well. You send over two kegs and I'll let you go without search. The two captains were very silent. As for that Lieutenant Maynard you're all talking about, said Blackbeard. Why, I know him very well. He was the one who was so busy with the pirates down Madagascar way. I believe you'd all like to see him blow me out of the water, but he can't do it. There's nobody in his majesty's service I'd rather meet than Lieutenant Maynard. I'll teach him pretty briskly that North Carolina isn't Madagascar. On the evening of the 22nd the two vessels under command of Lieutenant Maynard came into the mouth of Ocracoke Inlet and there dropped anchor. Meantime the weather had cleared and all the vessels but one had gone from the inlet. The one vessel that remained was a New Yorker. It had been there over a night and a day and the captain and Blackbeard had become very good friends. The same night that Maynard came into the inlet a wedding was held on the shore. A number of men and women came up the beach in ox carts and sledges. Others had come in boats from more distant points and across the water. The captain of the New Yorker and Blackbeard went ashore together a little after dark. The New Yorker had been aboard of the pirate soup for all the latter part of the afternoon and he and Blackbeard had been drinking together in the cabin. The New York man was now a little tipsy and he laughed and talked foolishly as he and Blackbeard rode ashore. The pirate sat grim and silent. It was nearly dark when they stepped ashore on the beach. The New York captain stumbled and fell headlong rolling over and over and the crew of the boat burst out laughing. The people had already begun to dance in an open shed fronting upon the shore. There were fires of pine knots in front of the building lighting up the interior with a red glare. A negro was playing the fiddle somewhere inside and the shed was filled with a crowd of grotesque dancing figures, men and women. Now and then they called with loud voices as they danced and the squeaking of the fiddle sounded incessantly through the noise of outcries and the stamp and shuffling of feet. Captain Teach and the New York captain stood looking on. The New York man had tilted himself against a post and stood there holding one arm around it supporting himself. He waved the other hand foolishly in time to now and then snapping his thumb and finger. The young woman who had just been married approached the two. She had been dancing and she was warm and red. Her hair blows about her head. Hi Captain, won't you dance with me? she said to Blackbeard. Blackbird stared at her. Who be you? he said. She burst out laughing. You look as if you'd eat a body, she cried. Blackbeard's face gradually relaxed. Sure, you're a brazen one for all the world. He said. Well, I'll dance with you, that I will. I'll dance the heart out of you. He pushed forward, thrusting aside with his elbow the newly made husband. The man who saw that Blackbeard had been drinking, burst out laughing and the other men and women who had been standing around drew away so that in a little while the floor was pretty well cleared. One could see the negro now. He sat on a barrel at the end of the barrel and grinned with his white teeth and without stopping in his fiddling scraped his bow harshly across the strings and then instantly changed the tune to a lively jig. Blackbeard jumped up into the air and clapped his heels together, giving, as he did so, a sharp, short yell. Then he began instantly dancing grotesquely and violently. The woman danced opposite him this way and that with her knuckles on her hips. Everybody burst out laughing with his mask antics. They laughed again and again, clapping their hands and the negro scraped away on his fiddle-like fury. The woman's hair came tumbling down her back. She tucked it back, laughing and panting and the sweat ran down her face. She danced and danced. At last she burst out laughing and stopped, panting. Blackbeard again jumped up in the air and clapped his heels. Again he yelled and as he did so once more everybody burst out laughing, clapping their hands and the negro stopped fiddling. Nearby was a shanty or cabin where they were selling spirits and by and by Blackbeard went there with the New York captain and presently they began drinking again. I, captain, called one of the men, Maynard's out yonder in the inlet. Jack Bishop's just come across to other side. He says Maynard hailed him and asked for a pilot to fetch him in. Well, here's luck to him and he can't come in quick enough for me, cried out Blackbeard in his horse husky voice. Well, captain, called a voice, will you fight him tomorrow? I shouted the pirate, if he can get into me, I'll try to give him what they seek and all they want of it into the bargain. As for a pilot, I'll tell you what is. If any man hereabouts goes out there to pilot that villain in it will be the worst day's work in all of his life. It won't be fit for him to live in these parts of America if I'm a living here at the same time. There was a burst of laughter. Give us a toast, captain, give us something to drink to. I, captain, a toast, a toast. A half dozen voices were calling out at the same time. Well, cried out the pirate captain, here's to a good hot fight tomorrow and the best dog on top will be bang, bang, this way. He began pulling a pistol out of his pocket but it stuck in the lining and he struggled and tugged at it. The men ducked and scrambled away from before him and then the next moment he had the pistol out of his pocket. He swung it around and around. There was perfect silence. Suddenly there was a flash and a stunning report and instantly a crash and a tinkle of broken glass. One of the men cried out and began picking and jerking at the back of his neck. He's broken that bottle all down my neck, he called out. It's the way it will be, said Blackbeard. Looky, said the owner of the place, I won't serve out another drop if it is going to be like that. If there's any more trouble, I'll blow out the lantern. The sound of the squeaking and scraping of the fiddle and the shouts and the scuffling feet still came from the shed where the dancing was going on. Suppose you get your dose tomorrow, captain, someone called out, what then? Why, if I do, said Blackbeard, I'll get it and that's all there is of it. Your wife will be a rich witty then, won't she? cried one of the men and there was a burst of laughter. Why, said the New York captain, why has a bloody pirate like you, a wife, then, like any honest man? She'll be no richer than she is now, said Blackbeard. She knows where you've hid your money anyways, don't she, captain? called out a voice. The devil knows where I've hid my money, said Blackbeard and I know where I've hid it and the longest liver of the twain will get it all and that's all there is of it. The gray of the early day was beginning to show in the east when Blackbeard and the New York captain came down to the landing together. The New York captain swayed and toppled this way and that as he walked, now falling against Blackbeard and now staggering away from him. End of Jack Ballester's Fortunes, Part 1 Section 11 of Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Barry Eads Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle Compiled by Merle Johnson Jack Ballester's Fortunes, Part 2 Early in the morning, perhaps eight o'clock, Lieutenant Maynard sent a boat from the schooner over to the settlement four or five miles distant. A number of men stood lounging on the landing, watching the approach of the boat. The men rode up close to the wharf and there lay upon their oars, while the boson of the schooner, who was in command of the boat, stood up and asked if there was any man there who could pilot them over the shoals. Nobody answered, but all stared stupidly at him. After a while, one of the men at last took his pipe out of his mouth. There being any pilot here, master, said he, we being pilots. Why, what a story you do tell, roared the boson. Do you suppose I've never been down here before, not to know that every man about here knows the passes of the shoals? The fellow still held his pipe in his hand. He looked at another one of the men. Do you know the passes in over the shoals, Jim? said he. The man to whom he spoke was a young fellow with long, shaggy, sun-burnt hair, hanging over his eyes in an unkempt mass. He shook his head, grunting, nay, I don't know not about the shoals. His lieutenant maynard of his majesty's navy in command of them vessels out there, said the boson. He'll give any man five pound to pilot him in. The men on the wharf looked at one another, but still no one spoke, and the boson stood looking at them. He saw that they did not choose to answer him. Why, he said, I believe you've not got right wits. That's what I believe is the matter with you. Pull me up to the landing men, and I'll go ashore and see if I can find anybody that's willing to make five pound for such a little bit of piloting as that. After the boson had gone ashore, the loungers still stood on the wharf, looking down into the boat, and began talking to one another for the men below to hear them. They're coming in, said one, to blow poor blackbeard out of the water. Said another. He's so peaceable too, he is. He'll just lay still and let him blow and blow, he will. There's a young fellow there, said another of the men. He don't look fit to die yet, he don't. Why, I wouldn't be in his place for a thousand pound. I do suppose, blackbeard so afraid, he don't know how to see, said the first speaker. At last one of the men in the boat stood up. Maybe he don't know how to see, said he, but maybe we'll blow some daylight into him before we get through with him. Some more of the settlers had come out from the shore to the end of the wharf, and there was now quite a crowd gathering there, all looking at the men in the boat. What do them Virginia backy eaters do down here in Carolina anyway? said one of the newcomers. They've got no call to be down here in North Carolina waters. Maybe you can keep us away from coming, and maybe you can't, said a voice from the boat. Why, answered the man on the wharf. We could keep you away easy enough, but you being worth the trouble, and that's the truth. There was a heavy iron bolt lying near the edge of the landing. One of the men upon the wharf slyly thrust it out with the end of his foot. It hung for a moment, and then fell into the boat with a crash. What do you mean by that? roared the man in the charge of the boat. What do you mean you villains? Do you mean to stave a hole in us? Why, said the man who had pushed it. You saw it wasn't done on purpose, didn't you? Well, you tried again, and somebody'll get hurt, said the man in the boat, showing the butt end of his pistol. The men on the wharf began laughing. Just then the boson came down from the settlement again and out along the landing. The threatened turbulence quieted as he approached, and the crowd moved sullenly aside to let him pass. He did not bring any pilot with him, and he jumped down into the stern of the boat, saying briefly, push off. The soldiers stood looking after them as they rode away, and when the boat was some distance from the landing, they burst out into a volley of derisive yells. The villains, said the boson. 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 boson scrambled aboard. No, I couldn't, sir, said the man. Either they 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. Two will 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 had forty men aboard, said the boson. Footnote. The pirate captain had really only twenty-five men aboard of his sloop at the time of the battle. End footnote. Lieutenant Maynard's force consisted of thirty-five men in the schooner and twenty-five men in the sloop. He carried neither cannons nor caronades, 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 overaw 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 boughs, 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. The lieutenant and his sailing master stood together on the roof of the cabin deckhouse. The sailing master held a glass to his eye. She carries a long gun, sir, he said, and four caronades. She'll be hard to beat, sir, I do suppose, armed as we are with only light arms for close fighting. The lieutenant laughed. Why, Brooks, he said, you seem to think forever of these men showing fight. You don't know them as I know them. They have a deal of bluster and make a deal of noise, but when you seize them and hold them with a strong hand, there's not a fight left in them. Tis like enough they'll not be so much as a musket fired today. I've had to do with them often enough before to know my gentlemen well by this time. Nor, as was said, was it until the very last that the lieutenant could be brought to believe that the pirates had any stomach for a fight. The two vessels had reached perhaps within a mile of the pirate sloop before they found the water too shallow to venture any farther with the sail. It was then that the boat was lowered as the lieutenant had planned and the boson went ahead to sound. The two vessels with their sail still hoisted but empty of wind, pulling in after with sweeps. The pirate had also hoisted sail but lay as though waiting for the approach of the schooner and the sloop. The boat in which the boson was sounding had run in a considerable distance ahead of the two vessels which were gradually creeping up with the sweeps until they had reached to within less than half a mile of the pirates. The boat with the boson may be a quarter of a mile closer. Suddenly there was a puff of smoke from the pirate sloop and then another and another and the next moment there came the three reports of muskets up the wind. By sounds, said the lieutenant, I do believe they're firing on the boat and then he saw the boat turn and begin pulling toward them. The boat with the boson aboard came rowing rapidly. Again there were three or four puffs of smoke and three or four subsequent reports from the distant vessel. Then in a little while the boat was alongside and the boson came scrambling aboard. Never mind hoisting the boat, said the lieutenant. We'll just take her in tow. Come aboard as quick as you can. Then turning to the sailing master. Well Brooks, you'll have to do the best you can to get in over the shoals under half sail. But sir, said the master, be sure to run aground. Very well sir, said the lieutenant. You heard my orders. If we run aground, we run aground and that's all there is of it. I sounded as far as maybe a little over a fathom, said the mate, but the villains would let me go no nearer. I think I was in the channel though. Tis more open inside as I mind me of it. There's a kind of hole there and if we can get in over the shoals just beyond where I was, we'll be all right. Very well then. We'll Baldwin, said the lieutenant, and do the best you can for us. Lieutenant Maynard stood looking out forward at the pirate vessel, which they were now steadily nearing under half sail. He could see that there were signs of bustle aboard and of men running around upon the deck. Then he walked aft and around the cabin. The sloop was some distance astern. It appeared to have run aground and they were trying to push it off with the sweeps. The lieutenant looked down into the water over the stern that the schooner was already raising the mud in her wake. Then he went forward along the deck. His men were crouching down along by the low rail and there was a tense quietness of expectation about them. The lieutenant looked them over as he passed them. Johnson, he said, do you take the lead and line and go forward and sound a bit? Then to the others. Now my men, the moment we run her aboard, you get aboard of her as quick as you can. Do you understand? Don't wait for the sloop or think about her, but just see that the grappling irons are fast and then get aboard. If any man offers to resist you, shoot him down. Are you ready, Mr. Kringle? Aye-aye, sir, said the gunner. Very well, then. Be ready, men. We'll be aboard him in a minute or two. There's less than a fathom of water here, sir, sang out Johnson from the bows. As he spoke, there was a sudden soft jar and jerk. Then the schooner was still. They were aground. Push her off to the lead there. Let go your sheets, roared the bows in from the wheel. Push her off to the lee. He spun the wheel around as he spoke. A half a dozen men sprang up, seized the sweeps and plunged them into the water. Others ran to help them, but the sweeps only sank into the mud without moving the schooner. The sails had fallen off and they were flapping and thumping and clapping in the wind. Others of the crew had scrambled to their feet and ran to help those at the sweeps. The lieutenant had walked quickly aft again. They were very close now to the pirate's loop and suddenly someone hailed him from aboard of her. When he turned, he saw that there was a man standing up on the rail of the pirate's loop, holding by the backstays. Who are you? he called from the distance. And whence come you? What do you seek here? What do you mean coming down on us this way? The lieutenant heard somebody say, That's Blackbeard himself! And he looked with great interest at the distant figure. The pirate stood out boldly against the cloudy sky. Somebody seemed to speak to him from behind. He turned his head and then he turned round again. We're only peaceful merchant men, he called out. What authority have you got to come down upon us this way? If you'll come aboard, I'll show you my papers and that we're only peaceful merchant men. The villains, said the lieutenant to the master who stood beside him. They're peaceful merchant men, are they? They're like peaceful merchant men with four cannonades and a long gun aboard. Then he called out across the water. I'll come aboard with my schooner as soon as I can push her off here. If you undertake to come aboard with me, called the pirate, I'll shoot into you. You've got no authority to board me and I won't have you do it. If you undertake, it will be at your own risk for I'll neither ask quarter of you nor give none. Very well, said the lieutenant, you choose to try that you may do so as you please for I'm coming aboard of you as sure as heaven. Push off the bow there, called the boson at the wheel. Look alive, why don't you push off the bow? She's hard aground, answered the gunner. We can't budge her an inch. If they was to fire into us now, said the sailing master, they'd smash us to pieces. They won't fire into us, said the lieutenant. They won't dare to. He jumped down from the cabin deckhouse as he spoke and went forward to urge the men in pushing off the boat. It was already beginning to move. At that moment, the sailing master suddenly called out, Mr. Maynard, Mr. Maynard, they're going to give us a broadside. Almost before the words were out of his mouth, before Lieutenant Maynard could turn, there came a loud and deafening crash and then instantly another and a third and almost as instantly a crackling and rending of broken wood. There were clean yellow splinters flying everywhere. A man fell violently against the lieutenant, nearly overturning him, but he caught at the stage and so saved himself. For one tense moment he stood holding his breath. Then all about him arose a sudden outcry of groans and shouts and oars. The man who had fallen against him was lying face down upon the deck. His thighs were quivering and a pool of blood was spreading and running out from under him. There were other men down, all about the deck. Some were rising, some were trying to rise, some only moved. There was a distant sound of yelling and cheering and shouting. It was from the pirate's loop. The pirates were rushing about upon her decks. They had pulled the cannon back and through the grunting sound of the groans about him, the lieutenant could distinctly hear the thud and punch of the rammers and he knew they were going to shoot again. The low rail offered almost no shelter against such a broadside and there was nothing for it but to order all hands below for the time being. Get below! roared out the lieutenant. All hands get below and lie snug for further orders. In obedience the men ran scrambling below into the hold and in a little while the decks were nearly clear except for the three dead men and some three or four wounded. The bows and crouching down close to the wheel and the lieutenant himself were the only others upon deck. Everywhere there were smears and sprinkles of blood. Where's Brooks? the lieutenant cried out. He's hurt in the arms, sir, and he's gone below, said the bowson. Thereupon the lieutenant himself walked over to the four-castle hatch and Haley and the gunner ordered him to get up another ladder so that the men could be run up on deck if the pirates should undertake to come aboard. At that moment the bowson at the wheel called out that the villains were going to shoot again and the lieutenant, turning, saw the gunner aboard of the pirate's loop in the act of touching the iron to the touch-hole. He stooped down. There was another loud and deafening crash of cannon. One, two, three, four, the last two almost together and almost instantly the bowson called out. Tiss the sloop, sir, look at the sloop. The sloop had got afloat again and had been coming up to the aid of the schooner when the pirates fired their second broadside now at her. When the lieutenant looked at her, she was quavering with the impact of the shot and the next moment she began falling off to the wind and he could see the wounded men rising and falling and struggling upon her decks. At the same moment the bowson called out that the enemy was coming aboard and even as he spoke, the pirate's sloop came drifting out from the cloud of smoke that enveloped her, looming up larger and larger as she came down upon them. The lieutenant still crouched down under the rail, looking out at them. Suddenly, a little distance away, she came about, broadside on and then drifted. She was close aboard now. Something came flying through the air, another and another. They were bottles. One of them broke with a crash upon the deck. The others rolled over to the farther rail. In each of them a quick match was smoking. Almost instantly there was a flash and a terrific report and the air was full of the whiz and singing of broken particles of glass and iron. There was another report and then the whole air seemed full of gunpowder smoke. There a board of us shouted the bowson and even as he spoke the lieutenant roared out all hands to repel boarders. A second later there came the heavy thumping bump of the vessels coming together. Lieutenant Maynard as he called out the order ran forward through the smoke snatching one of his pistols out of his pocket and the cutlass out of its sheath as he did so. Behind him the men were coming, swarming up from below. There was a sudden stunning report of a pistol and then another and another almost together. There was a groan and the fall of a heavy body and then a figure came jumping over the rail with two or three more directly following. The lieutenant was in the midst of the gunpowder smoke when suddenly blackbeard was before him. The pirate captain had stripped himself naked to the waist. His shaggy black hair was falling over his eyes and he looked like a demon fresh from the pit with his frantic face. With the blindness of instinct the lieutenant thrust out his pistol firing it as he did so. The pirate staggered back. He was down. No, he was up again. He had a pistol in each hand but there was a stream of blood running down his naked ribs. Suddenly the mouth of a pistol was pointing straight at the lieutenant's head. He ducked instinctively striking upward with his cutlass as he did so. There was a stunning deafening report almost in his ear. He struck again blindly with his cutlass. He saw the flash of a sword and flung up his guard almost instinctively meeting the crash of the descending blade. Somebody shot from behind him and at the same moment he saw someone else strike the pirate. Blackbeard staggered again and this time there was a great gash upon his neck. Then one of Maynard's own men tumbled headlong upon him. He fell with the man but almost instantly he had scrambled to his feet again and as he did so he saw that the pirate's loop had drifted a little away from them and that their grappling irons had evidently parted. His hand was smarting as though struck with the lash of a whip. He looked around him. The pirate captain was nowhere to be seen. Yes, there he was, lying by the rail. He raised himself upon his elbow and the lieutenant saw that he was trying to point a pistol at him with an arm that wavered and swayed blindly. The pistol nearly falling from his fingers. Suddenly his other elbow gave way and he fell down upon his face. He tried to raise himself. He fell down again. There was a report and a cloud of smoke and when it cleared away, Blackbeard had staggered up again. He was a terrible figure, his head nodding down upon his breast. Somebody shot again and then the swaying figure toppled and fell. It lay still for a moment, then rolled over, then lay still again. There was a loud splash of men jumping overboard and then almost instantly the cry of quarter, quarter. The lieutenant ran to the edge of the vessel. It was as he had thought. The grappling irons of the pirate's loop had parted and it had drifted away. The few pirates who had been left aboard of the schooner had jumped overboard and were now holding up their hands. Quarter they cried, Don't shoot, quarter! and the fight was over. The lieutenant looked down at his hand and then he saw for the first time that there was a great cutlass gash across the back of it and that his arm and shirt sleeve were wet with blood. He went aft holding the wrist of his wounded hand. The boson was still at the wheel. By sound said the lieutenant with a nervous quavering laugh, I didn't know there was such fight in the villains. His wounded and shattered stoop was again coming up toward him under sail, but the pirates had surrendered and the fight was over. End of Jack Ballester's Fortunes, Part 2 Section 12 of Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Barry Eads Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle Compiled by Merle Johnson Blue Skin, The Pirate, Part 1 Sub Chapter 1 Cape May and Cape Henlopen form, as it were, the upper and lower jaws of a gigantic mouth, which disgorges from its monstrous gullet the cloudy waters of the Delaware Bay into the heaving, sparkling blue-green of the Atlantic Ocean. From Cape Henlopen, as the lower jaw there juts out a long curving fang of high, smooth-rolling sand dunes cutting sharp and clean against the still blue sky above, silent, naked, utterly deserted accepting for the squat white-wall lighthouse standing upon the crest of the highest hill. Within this curving, sheltering hook of sandhills of Lou's Harbor. And set a little back from the shore, the quaint old town, with its dingy wooden houses of clapboard and shingle, looks sleepily out through the mass of the shipping line and anchor in the harbor to the purple, clean-cut, level thread of the ocean horizon beyond. Lou's is a queer, odd, old-fashioned little town smelling fragrant of salt marsh and sea breeze. It is rarely visited by strangers. The people who live there are the progeny of people who have lived there for many generations, and it is the very place to nurse and preserve and care for old legends and traditions of bygone times until they grow from bits of gossip and news into local history of considerable size. As the busier world men talk of last year's elections, here these old bits and scraps and odds and ends of history are retailed to the listener who cares to listen. Traditions of the War of 1812, when Bursford's fleet lay off the harbor threatening to bombard the town, tales of the Revolution and of Earl Howe's warships tearing for a while in the quiet harbor before they sailed up the river to shake old Philadelphia town with the thunders of their guns at Red Bank and Fort Mifflin. With these substantial and sober threads of real history, other and more lucid colors are interwoven into the web of local lore, legends of the dark doings of famous pirates, of their mysteries, sinister comings and goings, of treasures buried in the sand dunes and pine barrens back of the Cape, and along the Atlantic beach to the southward. Of such is the story of Bluskin, the pirate. Sub Chapter 2 It was in the fall and early winter of the year 1750 and again in the summer of the year following that the famous pirate, Bluskin, became especially identified with Luz as a part of its traditional history. For some time, for three or four years, rumors and reports of Bluskin's doings in the West Indies and off the Carolinas had been brought in now and then by sea captains. There was no more cruel, bloody, desperate devilish pirate than he in all those pirate-infested waters. All kinds of wild and bloody stories were current concerning him, but it never occurred to the good folk of Luz that such stories were some time to be a part of their own history. But one day, a schooner came drifting into Luz harbor. Shattered, wounded, her four castles splintered, her four mass shot half away and three great tattered holes in her mainsail. The mate with one of the crew came ashore in the boat for help and a doctor. He reported that the captain and the cook were dead and there were three wounded men aboard. The story he told to the gathering crowd brought a very peculiar thrill to those who heard it. They had fallen in with Bluskin, he said, off Fenwick's Island, some twenty or thirty miles below the capes. And the pirates had come aboard of them, but finding that the cargo of the schooner consisted only of cypress, shingles, and lumber had soon quitted their prize. Perhaps Bluskin was disappointed at not finding a more valuable capture. Perhaps the spirit of devil-tree was hotter in him that morning than usual. Anyhow, as the pirate-craft bore away, he fired three broadsides at short range into the helpless coaster. The captain had been killed at the first fire, the cook had died on the way up, three of the crew were wounded, and the vessel was leaking fast, betwixt wind and water. Such was the mate's story. It spread like wildfire, and in half an hour all the town was in a ferment. Fenwick's Island was very near home. Bluskin might come sailing into the harbor at any minute and then. In an hour, Sheriff Jones had called together most of the able-bodied men of the town. Muskets and rifles were taken down from the chimney places, and every preparation was made to defend the place against the pirates, should they come into the harbor and attempt to land. But Bluskin did not come that day, nor did he come the next or the next. But on the afternoon of the third, the news went suddenly flying over the town that the pirates were inside the capes. As the report spread, the people came running, men, women and children, to the green before the tavern, where a little knot of old seamen were gathered together, looking fixedly out toward the offing, talking in low voices. Two vessels, one bark-rigged, the other and smaller a sloop, were slowly creeping up the bay, a couple of miles or so away and just inside the cape. There appeared nothing remarkable about the two crafts, but the little crowd that continued gathering upon the green stood looking out across the bay at them, nonetheless anxiously for that. They were sailing close hauled to the wind, the sloop following in the wake of her consort as the pilot fish follows in the wake of the shark. But the course they held did not lie toward the harbor, but rather bore away toward the Jersey shore, and by and by it began to be apparent that Bluskin did not intend visiting the town. Nevertheless, those who stood looking did not draw a free breath until, after watching the two pirates for more than an hour and a half, they saw them, then about six miles away, suddenly put about and sail with a free wind out to sea again. The bloody villains have gone, said old Captain Woof, shutting his telescope with a click. But Luz was not yet quit of Bluskin. Two days later a half-breed from Indian River Bay came up, bringing the news that the pirates had sailed into the inlet fifteen miles below Luz and had careened the bark to clean her. Perhaps Bluskin did not care to stir up the country people against him, for the half-breed reported that the pirates were doing no harm and that what they took from the farmers of Indian River and Rehoboth they paid for with good hard money. It was while the excitement over the pirates was at its highest fever heat that Levi West came home again. Even in the middle of the last century the Gristmill, a couple of miles from Luz, although it was at most but fifty or sixty years old, had all a look of weather-beaten age for the cypress shingles of which it was built ripen in a few years of wind and weather to a silvery, hoary gray and the white powdering of flour lent it a look as though the dust of ages had settled upon it, making the shadows within dim, soft, mysterious. A dozen willow trees shaded with dappling, shivering ripples of shadow the road before the mill door and the mill itself and the long, narrow, shingle-built one-storied hip-roof dwelling-house. At the time of the story the mill had descended in a direct line of succession to Hiram White, the grandson of old Ephraim White, who had built it, it was said, in 1701. Hiram White was only twenty-seven years old, but he was already in local repute as a character. As a boy, he was thought to be half-witted or natural, and, as is the case with such unfortunates in small country towns where everybody knows everybody, he was made a common sport and jest for the keener, crueler wits of the neighborhood. Now that he was grown to the rightness of manhood, he was still looked upon as being, to use a quaint expression, slack or not just right. He was heavy, awkward, ungainly and loose-jointed and enormously, prodigiously strong. He had a lumpish, thick-featured face with lips heavy and loosely hanging that gave him an air of stupidity, half-droll, half-pathetic. His little eyes were set far apart and flat with his face. His eyebrows were nearly white and his hair was of a sandy colorless kind. He was singularly taciturn, lisping thickly when he did talk and stuttering and hesitating in his speech, as though his words moved faster than his mind could follow. It was the custom for local wags to urge or badger or tempt him to talk, for the sake of the ready laugh that always followed the few thick-stammering words and the stupid drooping of the jaw at the end of each short speech. Perhaps Squire Hall was the only one in Lou's Hundred who misdoubted that Hiram was half-witted. He had had dealings with him and was wont to say that whoever bought Hiram White for a fool made a fool's bargain. Certainly, whether he had common wits or no, Hiram had managed his mill to pretty good purpose and was fairly well off in the world as prosperity went in southern Delaware and in those days. No doubt, had it come to the pinch, he might have bought some of his tormentors out three times over. Hiram White had suffered quite a financial loss some six months before, through that very blue-skin who was now lurking in Indian River Inlet. He had entered into a venture with Joshua Shippen, a Philadelphia merchant, to the tune of seven hundred pounds sterling. The money had been invested in a cargo of flour and cornmeal which had shipped to Jamaica by the bark, Nancy Lee. The Nancy Lee had been captured by the pirates off Kuratuck Sound. The crew set adrift in the longboat and the bark herself and all her cargo burned to the water's edge. Five hundred of the seven hundred pounds invested in the unfortunate venture was money bequeathed by Hiram's father seven years before to leave I-West. Eliza White had been twice married, the second time to the widow West. She had brought with her to her new home a good-looking, long-legged, black-eyed, black-haired, narrow-dwell of a son, a year or so younger than Hiram. He was a shrewd, quick-witted lad, idle, shiftless, willful, ill-trained perhaps, but as bright and keen as a pin. He was the very opposite to poor Dull Hiram. Eliza White had never loved his son. He was ashamed of the poor, slack-witted oaf. Upon the other hand, he was very fond of leave I-West, whom he always called our leave I, and whom he treated in every way as though he were his own son. He tried to train the lad to work in the mill and was patient beyond what the patients of most fathers would have been with his stepson's idleness and shiftlessness. He used to say, leave I'll come all right, leave I's as bright as a button. It was one of the greatest blows of the old miller's life when leave I ran away to sea. In his last sickness, the old man's mind constantly turned to his lost stepson. Maybe he'll come back again, said he, and if he does, I want you to be good to him, Hiram. I've done my duty by you and have left you the house and mill, but I want you to promise that if leave I comes back again, I'll give him a home and a shelter under this roof if he wants one. And Hiram had promised to do, as his father asked. After Eliezer died, it was found that he had bequeathed 500 pounds to his beloved stepson, leave I-West, and had left Squire Hall as trustee. Leave I-West had been gone nearly nine years, and not a word had been heard from him. There could be little or no doubt that he was dead. One day, Hiram came into Squire Hall's office with a letter in his hand. The time of the old French war, and flour and cornmeal were fetching fabulous prices in the British West Indies. The letter Hiram brought with him was from a Philadelphia merchant, Josiah Shippen, with whom he had had some dealings. Mr. Shippen proposed that Hiram should join him in sending a venture of flour and cornmeal to Kingston, Jamaica. Hiram had slept upon the letter overnight, and now he brought it to the old Squire. Squire Hall read the letter, shaking his head the while. Too much risk, Hiram, said he. Mr. Shippen wouldn't have asked you to go into this venture if he could have got anybody else to do so. My advice is that you let it alone. I reckon you've come to me for advice. Hiram shook his head. He haven't? What have you come for, then? Seven hundred pounds, said Hiram. Seven hundred pounds, said Squire Hall. I haven't got seven hundred pounds to lend you, Hiram. Five hundred been left to leave I. I got hundred, raised hundred more on mortgage, said Hiram. Tut, tut, Hiram, said Squire Hall. That'll never do in the world. Suppose Levi West should come back again, what then? I'm responsible for that money. If you wanted to borrow it now for any reasonable venture, you should have it and welcome. But for such a wildcat scheme. Levi never come back, said Hiram. Nine years gone, Levi's dead. Maybe he is, said Squire Hall, but we don't know that. I'll give bond for security, said Hiram. Squire Hall thought for a while in silence. Very well, Hiram, said he buy and buy, if you'll do that. Your father left the money and I don't see that it's right for me to stay his son from using it. But if it is lost, Hiram, and if Levi should come back, it will go well to ruin you. So Hiram White invested seven hundred pounds in the Jamaica venture and every farthing of it was burned by blue skin, off curatuck sound. Sub Chapter 4 Sally Martin was said to be the prettiest girl in Lou's hundred, and when the rumor began to leak out that Hiram White was courting her, the whole community took it as a monstrous joke. It was the common thing to greet Hiram himself with, hey, Hiram, how's Sally? Hiram never made answer to such salutation, but went his way as heavily, as impassively, as dully as ever. The joke was true. Twice a week, rain or shine, Hiram White never failed to scrape his feet upon Billy Martin's doorstep. Twice a week, on Sundays and Thursdays, he never failed to make his customary seat by the kitchen fire. He rarely said anything by way of talk. He nodded to the farmer, to his wife, to Sally, and, when he chanced to be at home, to her brother, but he ventured nothing further. There he would sit from half past seven until nine o'clock, stolid, heavy, impassive, his dull eyes following now one of the family and now another, but always coming back again to Sally. It sometimes happened that she had other company, some of the young men of the neighborhood. The presence of such seemed to make no difference to Hiram. He bore whatever broad jokes might be cracked upon him, whatever grins, whatever giggling might follow those jokes, with the same patient impassiveness. There he would sit, silent, unresponsive. Then, at the first stroke of nine o'clock, he would rise, shoulder his ungainly person into his overcoat, twist his head into his three-cornered hat, and, with a, good night, Sally, I be going now, would take his departure, shutting the door carefully too behind him. Never perhaps was there a girl in the world had such a lover and such a courtship as Sally Martin. Sub Chapter 5 It was one Thursday evening, in the latter part of November, about a week after Blue Skin's appearance off the capes, and while the one subject of talk was of the pirates being in Indian River Inlet. The air was still and wintry, a sudden cold snap had set in, and skins of ice had formed over puddles in the road. The smoke from the chimneys rose straight in the quiet air, and voices sounded loud, as they do in frosty weather. Hiram White sat by the dim light of a tallow dip, pouring laboriously over some account books. It was not quite seven o'clock, and he never started for Billy Martin's before that hour. As he ran his finger slowly and hesitantly down the column of figures, he heard the kitchen door beyond open and shut, the noise of footsteps crossing the floor, and the scraping of a chair dragged forward to the hearth. Then came the sound of a basket of corn cobs being emptied on the smoldering blaze, and then the snapping and crackling of the reanimated fire. Hiram thought nothing of all this, accepting in a dim sort of way that it was Bob, the Negro millhand, or Old Black Dinah, the housekeeper, and so went on with his calculations. At last he closed the books with a snap, and, smoothing down his hair, a rose took up the candle, and passed out of the room into the kitchen beyond. A man was sitting in front of the corn cob fire that flamed and blazed in the great gaping sooty fireplace. A rough overcoat was flung over the chair behind him, and his hands were spread out to the roaring warmth. At the sound of the lifted latch and of Hiram's entrance, he turned his head, and when Hiram saw his face, he stood suddenly still as though turned to stone. The face, marvelously altered and changed as it was, was the face of his step-brother, Levi West. He was not dead. He had come home again. For a time not a sound broke the dead, unbroken silence, accepting the crackling of the blaze in the fireplace, and the sharp tickling of the tall clock in the corner. The one face, dull and stolid, with the light of the candle shining upward over its lumpy features, looked fixedly, immovably, stonely, as the blazer, sharp shrewd, cunning, the red-wavering light of the blaze shining upon the high cheekbones, cutting sharp on the nose and twinkling in the glassy turn of the black, rat-like eyes. Then suddenly that face cracked, broadened, spread to a grin. I have come back again, hi, said Levi, and at the sound of the words the speechless spell was broken. Hiram answered never a word, but he walked to the fireplace, upon the dusty mantel shelf among the boxes and bottles, and, drawing forward a chair upon the other side of the hearth, sat down. His dull little eyes never moved from his step-brother's face. There was no curiosity in his expression, no surprise, no wonder. The heavy underlip drooped a little farther open, and there was more than usual of dull expressionless stupidity upon the lumpish face, but that was all. As was said, the face upon which he looked was strangely, marvelously changed from what it had been when he had last seen it nine years before, and though it was still the face of Levi West, it was a very different Levi West than the shiftless Nair Duel who had run away to sea in the Brazilian brig that long time ago. That Levi West had been a rough, careless, happy-go-lucky fellow, thoughtless and selfish, but with nothing essentially evil or sinister in his nature. The Levi West that now sat in the rush-bottom chair at the other side of the fireplace had that stamped upon his front that might be both evil and sinister. His swart complexion was tanned to an Indian copper. On one side of his face was a curious discoloration in the skin in a long crooked, cruel scar that ran diagonally across the forehead and temple and cheek in a white, jagged seam. This discoloration was of a livid blue, about the tint of a tattoo mark. It made a patch the size of a man's hand lying across the cheek and the side of the neck. Hiram could not keep his eyes from this mark and the white scar cutting across it. There was an odd sort of incongruity in Levi's dress. A pair of heavy gold earrings and a dirty red handkerchief knotted loosely around his neck beneath an open collar, displaying to its full length that the sony Adam's apple gave to his costume somewhat the smack of a sailor. He wore a coat that had once been of fine plum color, now stained and faded, too small for his lean length and furbished with tarnished lace. Dirty cambrick cuffs hung at his wrists and on his fingers were half a dozen or more rings set with stones that shone and glistened and twinkled in the light of the fire. The hair at either temple curled, plastered flat to the cheek and a plated cue hung halfway down his back. Hiram, speaking never a word, sat motionless, his dull little eyes traveling slowly up and down and around and around his step-brother's person. Levi did not seem to notice his scrutiny, leaning forward, now with his palms spread out to the grateful warmth, now rubbing them slowly together. But at last he suddenly whirled his chair around, rasping on the floor of his step-brother. He thrust his hands into his capacious coat pocket and brought out a pipe which he proceeded to fill from a skin of tobacco. Well, hi, said he. Do you see I've come back home again? Thought you was dead, said Hiram Dolly. Levi laughed. Then he drew a red hot coal out of the fire, put it upon the bowl of the pipe and began puffing out clouds of pungent smoke. Nay, nay, said he, not dead, not dead by odds. But, puff, by the eternal holy high I played many a close game, puff, with old Davy Jones, for all that. Hiram's look turned inquiringly toward the jagged scar and Levi caught the slow glance. You're looking at this, said he, running his finger down the crooked seam. That looks bad, but it wasn't so close as this, laying his hand for a moment upon the livid stain. A coolly devil off Singapore gave me that cut when we fell foul of an opium junk in the China Sea four years ago last September. This, touching as this figurine blue patch again, was a closer miss high. A Spanish captain fired a pistol at me down off Santa Catarina. He was so nigh that the powder went under the skin, and it'll never come out again. His eyes, he had better have fired the pistol into his own head that morning. It was an eye high. He took his pipe out of his mouth and looked inquiringly at Hiram, who nodded. Levi laughed. Never doubt it, said he, but whether I'm changed or no, I'll take my affidavit that you are the same old half-witted high that you used to be. I remember Dad used to say that you hadn't no more than enough wits to keep you out of the rain. And talking of Dad high, is that what I've come home for? Hiram shook his head. I've come for that five hundred pounds that Dad left me when he died, for I hear and tell of that too. Hiram sat quite still for a second or two, and then he said, I put that money out to venture and lost it all. Levi's face fell, and he took his pipe out of his mouth, regarding Hiram sharply and keenly. What do you mean, said he presently? I thought you was dead, but he had changed hands and had been in the water for five hundred pounds into Nancy Lee, and Bluskin burned her off Kira-tuk. Burned her off Kira-tuk, repeated Levi, then suddenly a light seemed to break upon his comprehension. Burned by Bluskin, he repeated, and thereupon flung himself back in his chair and burst into a short, boisterous fit He paused for a moment, as though turning it over in his mind. Then he laughed again. "'All the same,' said he presently, "'do you see? I can't suffer for Blue-skins' doings. The money was willed to me, fair and true, and you have got to pay it, Hyrum White. Burn or sink, Blue-skin or no Blue-skin.' Again he puffed for a moment or two in reflective silence. "'All the same high,' said he, once more resuming the thread of talk, "'I don't reckon to be too hard on you. You be only half-witted anyway, and I shan't be too hard on you. I give you a month to raise that money, and while you're doing it, I'll just hang around here. "'I've been in trouble, Hy, do you see? I'm under a cloud, and so I want to keep here, as quiet as may be. I'll tell you how it came about. I had a set to with a land pirate in Philadelphia, and somebody got hurt. That's the reason I'm here now, and don't you say anything about it, do you understand?' Hyrum opened his lips as though it was his intent to answer, then seemed to think better of it and contented himself by nodding his head. That Thursday night was the first for a sixth month that Hyrum White did not scrape his feet clean at Billy Martin's doorstep. End of Section 12