ll.
Blackbeard has no notion of letting you get away from him to betray this
rendezvous and stir the colonies to send an expedition after him.
Steady the helm, Jack, and watch for squalls. If I can read the signs,
there is trouble afoot. And we must seek our own advantage in the nick
of time."

"But these wild sots no longer think of mutiny and the like, Joe. They
are content to let the morrow go hang."

"S-s-s-h, 'ware the master of the sloop," cautioned Joe. "He makes for
the gangway, the big lump of tallow."

They moved away while Captain Richard Spender clumsily descended into
his boat, his broad face flushed, his breath asthmatic. He had a piping
voice absurd for his bulk and the two lads amused themselves with
mimicking him as the boat pulled in the direction of the sloop. So safe
against surprise did Blackbeard regard himself in this lonely anchorage
that no more than a dozen men were left aboard to keep the ship through
the night. Among these was Jack Cockrell, as his comrade had foreseen.
It therefore happened that they remained together, for Joe had
volunteered to join the anchor watch. In a melancholy mood the two lads
idled upon the after deck.

The sun dropped behind the dark and tangled forest and flights of herons
came winging it home to the islets in the swamps. On the sward by the
silver strand the throng of pirates had stilled their clamor while a
rascal with a tenor voice held them enraptured with the haunting refrain
of:

"Sweet Annie frae the sea-beach came,
Where Jockey's climbed the vessel's side:
Ah! wha can keep her heart at hame,
When Jockey's tossed aboon the tide?

"Far off 'till distant realms he gangs,
But I'se be true, as he ha' been;
And when ilk lass around him thrangs,
He'll think on Annie's faithful een."

Forlorn Jack Cockrell had homesick thoughts and felt hopeless of loosing
the snares which bound him. All that sustained his courage was the
sanguine disposition of Joe Hawkridge, whose youthful soul had been so
battered and toughened by dangers manifold on land and sea that he
expected nothing less. Listening to the pirate's moving ballad, they sat
and swung their legs from the ship's taffrail while their gaze idly
roved to the green curtain of undergrowth which ran lush to the water's
edge to the northward of the beach.

It was Joe who called attention to a floating object which