CHAPTER XXI
A PROJECTED MARRIAGE
STRANGE as it may appear, Dickory Charter was not a very unhappy young fellow as he stood in his fine uniform on the quarter-deck of the Revenge, the fresh breeze ruffling his brown curls when he lifted his heavy cocked hat.
True, he was leaving behind him his friends, Captain Bonnet and Ben Greenway, with whom the wayward Blackbeard would allow no word of leave-taking; true, he was going, he knew not where, and in the power of a man noted the new world over for his savage eccentricities; and true, he might soon be sailing, hour by hour, farther and farther away from the island on which dwelt the angel Kate—that angel Kate and his mother. But none of these considerations could keep down the glad feeling that he was going, that he was moving. Moreover, in answer to one of his impassioned appeals to be set ashore at Jamaica, Blackbeard had said to him that if he should get tired of him he did not see, at that moment, any reason why he should not put him on board some convenient vessel and have him landed at Kingston.
Dickory did not believe very much in the black-bearded pirate, with his wild tricks and inhuman high spirits, but Jamaica lay to the east, and he was going eastward.
Incited, perhaps, by the possession of a fine ship, manned by a crew picked from his old vessel and from the men who had formed the crew of the Revenge, Blackbeard was in better spirits than was his wont, and so far as his nature would allow he treated Dickory with fair good-humour. But no matter what happened, his unrestrained imagination never failed him. Having taken the fancy to see Dickory always in full uniform, he allowed him to assume no other clothes; he was always in naval full-dress and cocked hat, and his duties were those of a private secretary.
"The only shrewd thing I ever knew your Sir Nightcap to do," he said, "was to tell me you could not read nor write. He spoke so glibly that I believed him. Had it not been so I should have sent you to the town to help with the shore end of my affairs, and then you would have been there still and I should have had no admiral to write my log and straighten my accounts."
Sometimes, in his quieter moods, when there was no provocation to send pistol-balls between two sailors quietly conversing, or to perform some other demoniac trick, Blackbeard would talk to Dickory and ask all manner of questions, some of which the young man answered, while some he tried not to answer. Thus it was that the pirate found out a great deal more about Dickory's life, hope, and sorrows than the young fellow imagined that he made known. He discovered that Dickory was greatly interested in Bonnet's daughter, and wished above all other things in this world to get to her and to be with her.
This was a little out of the common run of things among the brotherhood; it was their fashion to forget, so far as they were able, the family ties which already belonged to them, and to make no plans for any future ties of that sort which they might be able to make. Such a thing amused the generally rampant Blackbeard, but if this Dickory boy whom they had on board really did wish to marry some one, the idea came into the crafty mind of Blackbeard that he would like to attend to that marrying himself. It pleased him to have a finger in every pie, and now here was a pie in the fingering of which he might take a novel interest.
This renowned desperado, this bloody cutthroat, this merciless pirate possessed a home—a quiet little English home on the Cornwall coast, where the cheerful woods and fields stretched down almost in reach of the sullen sea. Here dwelt his wife, quiet Mistress Thatch, and here his brawny daughter. Seldom a word came to this rural home from the father, burning and robbing, sinking and slaying out upon the western seas. But from the stores of pelf which so often slipped so easily into his great arms, and which so often slipped just as easily out of them, came now and then something to help the brawn grow upon his daughter's bones and to ease the labours of his wife.
Eliza Thatch bore no resemblance to a houri; her hair was red, her face was freckled; she had enough teeth left to do good eating with when she had a chance, and her step shook the timbers of her little home.
Her father had heard from her a little while ago by a letter she had had conveyed to Belize. His parental feelings, notwithstanding he had told Bonnet he knew no such sentiments, were stirred. When he had finished her letter he would have been well pleased to burn a vessel and make a dozen passengers walk the plank as a memorial to his girl. But this not being convenient, it had come to him that he would marry the wench to the gaily bedecked young fellow he had captured, and it filled his reckless heart with a wild delight. He drew his cutlass, and with a great oath he drove the heavy blade into the top of the table, and he swore by this mark that his grand plan should be carried out.
He would sail over to England; this would be a happy chance, for his vessel was unladen and ready for any adventure. He would drop anchor in the quiet cove he knew of; he would go ashore by night; he would be at home again. To be at home again made him shout with profane laughter, the little home he remembered would be so ridiculous to him now. He would see again his poor little trembling wife—she must be gray by now—and he was sure that she would tremble more than ever she did when she heard the great sea oaths which he was accustomed to pour forth now. And his daughter, she must be a strapping wench by this time; he was sure she could stand a slap on the back which would kill her mother.
Yes, there should be a wedding, a fine wedding, and good old rum should water the earth. And he would detail a boat's crew of jolly good fellows from the Revenge to help make things uproarious. This Charter boy and Eliza should have a house of their own, with plenty of money—he had more funds in hand than ever in his life before—and his respectable son-in-law should go to London and deposit his fortune in a bank. It would be royal fun to think of him and Eliza highly respectable and with money in the bank. A quart of the best rum could scarcely have made Blackbeard more hilarious than did this glorious notion. He danced among his crew; he singed beards; he whacked with capstan bars; he pushed men down hatchways; he was in lordly spirits, and his crew expected some great adventure, some startling piece of deviltry.
Of course he did not keep his great design from Dickory—it was too glorious, too transcendent. He took his young admiral into his cabin and laid before him his dazzling future.
Dickory sat speechless, almost breathless. As he listened he could feel himself turn cold. Had any one else been talking to him in this strain he would have shouted with laughter, but people did not laugh at Blackbeard.
When the pirate had said all and was gazing triumphantly at poor Dickory, the young man gasped a word in answer; he could not accept this awful fate without as much as a wave of the hand in protest.
"But, sir," said he, "if——"
Blackbeard's face grew black; he bent his head and lowered upon the pale Dickory, then, with a tremendous blow, he brought down his fist upon the table.
"If Eliza will not have you," he roared; "if that girl will not take you when I offer you to her; if she or her mother as much as winks an eyelash in disobedience of my commands, I will take them by the hair of their heads and I will throw them into the sea. If she will not have you," he repeated, roaring as if he were shouting through a speaking trumpet in a storm, "if I thought that, youngster, I would burn the house with both of them in it, and the rum I had bought to make a jolly wedding should be poured on the timbers to make them blaze. Let no notions like that enter your mind, my boy. If she disobeys me, I will cook her and you shall eat her. Disobey me!" And he swore at such a rate that he panted for fresh air and mounted to the deck.
It was not a time for Dickory to make remarks indicating his disapproval of the proposed arrangement.
As the Revenge sailed on over sunny seas or under lowering clouds, Dickory was no stranger to the binnacle, and the compass always told him that they were sailing eastward. He had once asked Blackbeard where they now were by the chart, but that gracious gentleman of the midnight beard had given him oaths for answers, and had told him that if the captain knew where the ship was on any particular hour or minute nobody else on that ship need trouble his head about it. But at last the course of the Revenge was changed a little, and she sailed northward. Then Dickory spoke with one of the mildest of the mates upon the subject of their progress, and the man made known to him that they were now about half-way through the Windward passage. Dickory started back. He knew something of the geography of those seas.
"Why, then," he cried, "we have passed Jamaica!"
"Of course we have," said the man, and if it had not been for Dickory's uniform he would have sworn at him.