Chapter XXIX

AN EXPEDITION

BLACKBEARD had been away from home for some days in Bath Town—a longer stay than he commonly made. Meantime Jack was the only hale man left about the place. He and Dred had been turned out of their beds to make way for Hands, who had been brought ashore to the house from the sloop when he was shot through the leg. That had been four or five weeks before, and since then Jack and Dred had slept in the kitchen. It was very hard upon Dred, who was weak and sick with the fever.

Then one morning the pirate captain suddenly returned from the town.

Jack and Betty Teach were at breakfast in the kitchen, and Dred lay upon a bench, his head upon a coat rolled into a pillow.

“You’d better come and try to eat something,” said Betty Teach. “I do believe if you try to eat a bit you could eat, and to my mind you’d be the better for it.” Dred shook his head weakly without opening his eyes. Jack helped himself to a piece of bacon and a large yellow yam. “Now, do come and eat a bit,” urged the woman.

“I don’t want anything to eat,” said Dred, irritably. “I wish you’d let me alone.” He opened his eyes for a brief moment and then closed them again.

“Well,” said Betty, “you needn’t snap a body’s head off. I only ask you to eat for your own good—if you don’t choose to eat, why, don’t eat. You’ll be as testy as Hands by and by—and to be sure, I never saw anybody like he is with his sore leg. You’d think he was the only man in the world who had ever been shot, the way he do go on.”

“‘Twas a pretty bad hurt,” said Jack, with his mouth full, “and that’s the truth. ’Tis a wonder to me how he did not lose his leg. ’Tis an awful-looking place.” Dred listened with his eyes closed.

Just then the door opened and the captain came in, and then they ceased speaking. He looked very glum and preoccupied. Dred opened his eyes where he lay and looked heavily at him. The captain did not notice any of the three, but went to the row of pegs against the wall and hung up his hat, and then picked up a chair and brought it over to the table. “Have you had your breakfast yet, Ned?” his wife asked.

“No,” he said, briefly. He sat quite impassively as she bustlingly fetched him a plate and a knife and fork. “Where’s the case bottle?” he asked, without looking up.

“I’ll fetch it to you,” she said, and she hurried to the closet and brought out the squat bottle and set it beside him. He poured out a large dram for himself and then turned suddenly to Dred.

“Chris,” he said, “I got some news from Charleston last night. Jim Johnson’s come on, and he says that a packet to Boston in Massachusetts was about starting three or four days after he left. There’s a big prize in it, I do believe, and I’ve sent word down to the meet that we are to be off as soon as may be. I’m going to run down to-night.”

Jack sat listening intently. He did not quite understand what was meant, and he was very much interested to comprehend. He could gather that the pirate was going away, seemingly on an expedition of some sort, and he began wondering if he was to be taken along. Again Dred had opened his eyes and was lying looking at the pirate captain, who, upon his part, regarded the sick man for a steadfast moment or two without speaking. “D’ye think ye can go along?” said Blackbeard presently.

“Why, no,” said Dred weakly, “you may see for yourself that I can’t go along. How could I go along? Why, I be a bedrid man.”

The captain stared almost angrily at him. “I believe you could go along,” said he, “if you’d have the spirit to try. Ye lie here all day till you get that full of the vapors that I don’t believe you’ll ever be fit to get up at all. Don’t you think you could try?” Dred shook his head. “D’ye mean to say that you won’t even make a try to go along? D’ye mean that because you’re a little bit sick you choose to give up your share in the venture that’ll maybe make the fortune of us all?”

“I can’t help it,” said Dred, and then he groaned. “You may see for yourself that I’m not fit for anything. I wouldn’t do any good, and ’twould only cripple you to have a sick man aboard.”

“But how am I to get along without you?” said Blackbeard, savagely, “that’s what I want to know. There’s Hands in bed with his broken knee, and you down with the fever, and only Morton and me to run everything aboard the two sloops. For they do say that the packet’s armed and we’ll have to take both sloops.”

Jack had listened with a keener and keener interest. He felt that he must know just what all the talk meant. “Where are you going, captain?” he said. “What are you going to do?”

The pirate turned a lowering look upon him. “You mind your own business and don’t you concern youself with what don’t concern you,” he said. Then he added, “Wherever we’re going, you’re not going along, and you may rest certain of that. You’ve got to stay at home here with Betty, for she can’t get along with the girl and two sick men to look after.”

“He means he’s going on a cruise, Jack,” said Dred from the bench. “They’re going to cruise outside to stop the Charleston packet.”

“I don’t see,” said Jack to the pirate captain, “that I’m any better off here than I was up in Virginia. I had to serve Mr. Parker there and I have to slave for you here without getting anything for it.”

Blackbeard glowered heavily at him for a few moments without speaking. “If ye like,” he said, “I’ll send ye back to Virginia to your master. I dare say he’d be glad enough to get you back again.” And then Jack did not venture to say anything more. “Somebody’ll have to stay to look after all these sick people,” Blackbeard continued, “and why not you as well as another?”

The pirate’s wife had left the table and was busy getting some food together on a pewter platter. “You take this up-stairs to the young lady, Jack,” she said, “while I get something for Hands to eat. I never see such trouble in all my life as the three of ‘em make together—the young lady, and Hands, and Chris Dred here.”

“When d’ye sail!” Dred asked of the pirate captain, and Jack lingered, with the plate in his hand, to hear the answer.

“Why, just as soon as we can get the men together. The longer we leave it the less chance we’ll have of coming across the packet.” Jack waited a little while longer, but Blackbeard had fallen to at his breakfast, and he saw that no more was to be said just then, so he went up-stairs with the food, his feet clattering noisily as he ascended the dark, narrow stairway.

The young lady was sitting by the window, leaning her elbow upon the sill. Jack set the platter of food upon the table and laid the iron knife and two-pronged fork beside it. She had by this time become well acquainted with him and the other members of the pirate’s household. She would often come down-stairs when Blackbeard was away from home, and would sit in the kitchen talking with them, sometimes even laughing at what was said, and, for the time, appearing almost cheerful in spite of her captivity. Several times Jack and Betty Teach had taken her for a walk of an evening down the shore and even around the point in the direction of Trivett’s plantation house. She looked toward him now as he entered and then turned listlessly to the window again. She was very thin and white, and she wore an air of dejection that was now become habitual with her. “Do you know whether they have heard anything from Virginia to-day?” she asked.

“I don’t believe they have,” said Jack. “At least I didn’t hear Captain Teach say anything of the sort. Maybe by the time he comes back there’ll be a letter.”

“Comes back? Is he, then, going away?”

“Ay,” said Jack. “He’s going off on an expedition that’ll maybe take him two or three weeks.”

“An expedition?” she said. She looked at Jack as though wondering what he meant, but she did not inquire any further. “A matter of two or three weeks,” she repeated, almost despairingly. “I suppose, then, if a letter should come I would have to wait all that time until Captain Teach comes back again?”

“And cannot you, then, have patience to wait for a week or so, who have been here now a month?” said Jack.

Just then came the sound of the pirate captain’s heavy tread ascending the stairs.

“There he is, now,” said Jack, “and I’ve got to go.”

“Won’t you ask him if he’s heard anything from Virginia yet?”

“Why, mistress, it won’t be of any use for me to ask him; he won’t give me any satisfaction,” said Jack; and then he added,—“but I will if you want me to.”

Blackbeard went along the low, dark passageway and into the room where Hands lay, and Jack followed him. “Phew!” said the pirate captain, and he went across the room and opened the window. Hands, unconscious of the heavy, fetid smell of the sick-room, was sitting propped up in bed with a pillow, smoking a pipe of tobacco. He was very restless and uneasy, and had evidently heard some words of the pirate’s talk with Dred down-stairs. “Well, what’s ado now?” he asked.

“Why,” said Blackbeard, “we’re off on a cruise.”

“Off on a cruise?” said Hands.

“Yes,” said Blackbeard, as he sat himself down on the edge of the bed, “I was up in town last night when Jim Johnson came up. He’d just come back from Charleston and brought news of the Boston packet sailing. He says it was the talk there that there was a chist o’ money aboard.”

Hands laid aside his pipe of tobacco and began swearing with all his might. “What did ye mean, anyway,” he said, “to shoot me wantonly through the knee?” He tried to move himself in the bed. “M-m-m!” he grunted, groaning. He clenched the fist upon which he rested, making a wry face as he shifted himself a little on the bed.

The pirate captain watched him curiously as he labored to move himself. “How do you feel to-day?” he asked.

“Oh! I feel pretty well,” said Hands, groaning, “only when I try to move a bit. I reckon I’ll never be able to use my leg agin to speak on.”

Betty Teach came in with a platter of food. “What ha’ ye got there?” asked the sick man, craning his neck.

“A bit of pork and some potatoes,” she said.

“Potatoes and pork,” he growled. “’Tis always potatoes and pork, and nothing else.” She made no reply, but set the platter down upon the bed and stood watching him. “When do you sail?” asked Hands.

“As soon as we can,” said Blackbeard, briefly.

“The young lady wants to know if you’ve heard anything yet from Virginia,” said Jack.

The pirate looked scowlingly at him. “I’ll tell her when I hear anything,” he said shortly.

Blackbeard ate his dinner ashore, and it was some time afternoon before the sloop was ready to sail. Some half-dozen men had come up, during the morning, in a rowboat from somewhere down the sound. They had hoisted sail aboard the sloop, and now all was ready for departure. The clouds had blown away, and the autumn sun shone warm and strong. Dred had come down from the house to see the departure, and by and by Blackbeard appeared, carrying the guitar, which he handed very carefully into the boat before he himself stepped down into it. Dred and Jack stood on the edge of the landing, watching the rowboat as it pulled away from the wharf toward the sloop, the captain sitting in the stern. Two or three men were already hoisting the anchor, the click-clicking of the capstan sounding sharply across the water. The long gun in the bows pointed out ahead silently and grimly. Presently the small boat was alongside the sloop, and the captain scrambled over the rail, the others following. Still Jack and Dred stood on the end of the wharf, watching the sloop as the bow came slowly around. Then, the sail filling with the wind, it heeled heavily over, and with gathering speed swept sluggishly away from its moorings, leaving behind it a swelling wake, in which towed the yawl boat that had brought the captain aboard. They watched it as it ran further and further out into the river, growing smaller and smaller in the distance, and then, when a great way off, coming about again. They watched it until, with the wind now astern, it slipped swiftly in behind the jutting point of swamp and was cut off by the intervening trees. The two stood inertly for a while in the strange silence that seemed to fall upon everything after all the bustle of the departure. The water lapped and splashed and gurgled against the wharf, and a flock of blue jays from the wet swamp on the other side of the creek begun suddenly screaming out their noisy, strident clamor. Presently Dred groaned. “I’m going back to the house,” he said. “I ain’t fit to be out, and that’s a fact. I never had a fever to lay me out like this. I’m going up to the house, and I ain’t going to come out ag’in till I’m fit to be out.”