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the boat were called into the cabin. Joe Hawkridge knew them as fellows loyal to Blackbeard through thick and thin. Drunken beasts, as a rule, they were cold sober to-night.
As quietly as they had come, the whole party dropped into the boat and returned either to the beach or to the sloop which rode at anchor two cable-lengths away. The Revenge floated with no more activity on her darkened decks. The few men of the watch drowsed at their stations or wistfully gazed at the fires ashore and the mob of pirates who moved in the red glare. Jack Cockrell and Joe Hawkridge felt no desire for sleep. As the ship swung with the turn of the tide, they went to the side and leaned on the tall bulwark where they might catch the first glimpse of the shore with the break of day.
Meanwhile they busied themselves with this wild scheme and that. Sifting them out, it was resolved to swim from the ship at the first opportunity. If they could not find the Indian pirogue, Joe would try to get into the pirates' camp by night and possess himself of an axe, an adze, a musket or two, and such food as he could smuggle out. Then, at a pinch, they could hide themselves a little way inland and hew out a pirogue of their own from a dry log. After hitting upon this plan, the better it seemed the more they thrashed it over.
Unluckily it occurred to them so late in the night that they feared to attempt it then lest the dawn might overtake them while they were swimming. 'Twas a great pity, said Joe, that their wits had hung fire, like a damp flint-lock, for this was the night when the pirates would be the most slack and befuddled and it would be precious hard waiting through another day. Jack glumly agreed with this point of view.
It was so near morning, however, that they lingered to scan the shore. Then it was observed that a pearly mist was rising from the swamp lands and spreading out over the water. It was almost like a fog which the morning breeze would dispel after a while. Rolling like smoke it hung so low that the topmast of the sloop rose above it although her hull was like the gray ghost of a vessel.
"No sign of wind as yet," said Joe, holding up a wetted finger, "and that red sunset bespoke a calm, hot day. This odd smother o' mist may stay a couple of hours. Will ye venture it with me, Jack?"
"Gladly! Over we go, before the watch is flogged awake by the bos'n's mate."
They crept aft to the high stern and paid out a coil of rope until it trailed in the water beneath the railed gallery which overhung the huge rudder. Joe belayed his end securely and slid over like a flash, twisting the rope around one leg and letting himself down as agile as a monkey. Without a splash he cast himself loose and Jack followed but not so adroitly. When he plopped into the water the commotion was like tossing a barrel overboard, but nobody sounded an alarm.
They clung to the rusty rudder chains and listened. The ship was all quiet. Then out into the mist they launched themselves, swimming almost submerged, dreading to hear an outcry and the spatter of musket balls. But the veiling mist and the uncertain light of dawn soon protected the fugitives. It was slow, exhausting progress, hampered as they were by their breeches and shoes which could not be discarded. They tried to keep a sense of direction, striking out for the mouth of the creek in which the pirogue had been moored, but the tide set them off the course and the only visible marks were the spars of the ship behind them and the sloop's topmast off to one side.
Jack swam more strongly and showed greater endurance because he had the beef and had been better nourished all his life than the scrawny young powder boy who was more like a lath. Now and then Jack paused to tread water while his shipmate clung to his shoulder and husbanded his waning strength, with that indomitable grin on his freckled phiz. Of one thing they were thankful, that the tide was bearing them farther away from the pirates' camp, which was now as still as though the sleepers were dead men.
"Blood and bones, but I have swum a league a'ready," gurgled Joe during one of the halts.
"Shut your mouth or you'll fill up to the hatch and founder," scolded Jack. "I see trees in the mist. The shore is scarce a pistol shot away."
"I pray my keel scrapes soon," spluttered the waterlogged Hawkridge as he kicked himself along in a final effort.
Huzza, their feet touched the soft ooze and they fell over stumps and rotted trunks buried under the surface. Scratched and beplastered with mud, they crawled out in muck which gripped them to the knees, and roosted like buzzards upon the butt of a prostrate live-oak.
"Marooned," quoth Joe, "to be eaten by snakes and alligators."
"Nonsense," snapped Master Cockrell, who had hunted deer and wild-fowl on the Carolina coast. "We can pick our way with care. I have seen pleasanter landscapes than this, but I like it better than Blackbeard's company."
There was no disputing this statement and Joe plucked up spirit, as was his habit when another arduous task confronted him. Cautiously they made their way from one quaking patch of sedge to another or scrambled to their middles. There came a ridge of higher ground thick with brambles and knotted vines and they traversed this with less misery. A gleam of water among the trees and they took it to be the creek which they sought to find. Wary of lurking Indians, they wormed along on their stomachs and so came to the high swamp grass of the bank.
They swam the creek and crept toward its mouth. Jack was rooting along like a bear when he almost bumped into the dugout canoe which had looked so very like a stranded log. It was tied to a tree by a line of twisted fibre and the rising tide had borne it well up into the marsh. Here it was invisible from the ship and only a miracle of good fortune had revealed it to the lads in that glimpse from the deck at sundown.
They crawled over the gunwale and slumped in the bottom of the pirogue, which was larger than they expected, a clumsy yet seaworthy craft with a wide floor and space to crowd a dozen men. Fire had helped to hollow it from a giant of a cypress log, for the inner skin was charred black. Three roughly made paddles were discovered. This was tremendously important, and all they lacked was a mast and sail to be true navigators.
Something else they presently found which was so unlooked for, so incredible, that they could only gape and stare at each other. Tucked in the bow was a seaman's jacket of tarred canvas, of the kind used in wet weather. Sewed to the inside of it was a pocket of leather with a buttoned flap. This Jack Cockrell proceeded to explore, recovering from his stupefaction, and fished out a wallet bound in sharkskin as was the habit of sailors to make for themselves in tropic waters. It contained nothing of value, a few scraps of paper stitched together, a bit of coral, a lock of yellow hair, a Spanish coin, some shreds of dried tobacco leaf.
Carefully Jack examined the ragged sheets of paper which seemed to be a carelessly jotted diary of dates and events. Upon the last leaf was scrawled, "Bill Saxby, His Share," and beneath this entry such items as these:
"Aprl. ye 17—A Spanish shippe rich laden. 1 sack Vanilla. 2 Rolls Blue Cloth of Peru. 1 Packet Bezoar Stones.
"May ye 24—A Poor Shippe. 3 Bars of Silver. 1 Case Cordial Waters. A Golden Candle-stick. My share by Lot afore ye Mast."
Joe Hawkridge could neither read nor write but he had ready knowledge of the meaning of these entries and he cried excitedly:
"Say the name again, Jack. Bill Saxby, His Share. Strike me blind, but I was chums with Bill when we lay off Honduras. As decent a lad as ever went a-piratin'! A heart of oak is Bill, hailin' from London town."
"But what of the riddle?" impatiently demanded Jack. "Whence this Indian pirogue? And where is Bill Saxby?"
"He sailed with Stede Bonnet, bless ye," answered Joe. "These two men we spied in the canoe last night were no Indians. They were Cap'n Bonnet's men. Indians would ha' hid the pirogue more craftily."
"But they came not along the coast. Did they drop down this creek from somewhere inland?"
"There you put me in stays," confessed Joe. "One thing I can swear. They were sent to look for Blackbeard's ships. And I sore mistrust they were caught whilst prowling near the camp. Else they would ha' come back to the canoe before day."
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