ew up to his very eyes. This beard he twisted into four
long tails, tied with ribbons, two of which he tucked behind his
outstanding ears, and two over his shoulders. His hair was like a mat
and grew low over his forehead. In fact, little of the skin of his face
was visible, his fierce eyes glaring from a visage like that of a
baboon. In fighting, it was his custom to stick lighted fuses under his
hat, the glare of which, reflected in his jet-like eyes, greatly
increased the ferocity of his appearance.

Teach was an execrable rascal, who ruled his ship by terror. The worst
of his crew admitted him master of horror as well as of men. It was his
custom ever and anon to shoot a member of his crew, whenever the fancy
pleased him, in order that they should remember that he was captain.

Blackbeard is famous in the annals of piracy for his idea of a pleasant
entertainment. One afternoon, when his ship was lying becalmed, the
pirates found the time pass heavily. They had polished their weapons
till they shone like silver. They had gambled until one-half of the
company was swollen with plunder and the other half, penniless and
savage. They had fought until there was nothing left to fight about, and
it was too hot to sleep.

At this, Teach, hatless and shoeless, and, says his biographer, "a
little flushed with drink"--as a man might be who spent most of his
waking hours swigging pure rum--stumbled up on deck and made a proposal
to his bored companions.

"I'm a better man than any o' you alive, an' I'll be a better man when
we all go below. Here's for proving it!"

At which he routed up half a dozen of the most hardened of the crew,
kicked them down into the hold, joined them himself and closed the
hatches. There in the close, hot hold, smelling of a thousand odors,
they set fire to "several pots full of brimstone and other inflammable
matters" and did their best to reproduce what they thought to be the
atmosphere of the Pit.

One by one, the rest gave in and burst for the comparatively free air of
the deck, but Teach's ugly head was the last to come up the hatch, and
his pride thereon was inordinate. It was the surest road to the
Captain's good favors to remind him of his prowess in that stench-hole
on a tropic afternoon.

Teach's death was worthy of his life. Lieutenant Maynard of H. M. S.
_Pearl_ learned that Teach was resting in a quiet cove near Okracoke
Inlet, not far from Hatteras, N. C. He followed the pirate in a