shaking with nervousness as he said to the
skipper:

"There'll be no clearing the decks 'less they down that monster of a
Cap'n Teach. And he has more lives than a cat. See you my dear crony,
Master Jack?"

"No, I cannot make him out in that mad turmoil," replied Captain
Wellsby. "Nip and tuck, I call it, Joe."

This was the opinion forced upon Lieutenant Maynard as he saw the
engagement resolve itself into a series of bloody whirlpools, his seamen
and the pirates intermingled. He won his way past the forecastle into
the wider spaces of the deck, with only a few of his twenty tars on
their feet. Colonel Stuart was hard pressed and the boarders who had
come over the stern had as much as they could do to hold their own. Thus
far the issue was indecisive.

Jack Cockrell had kept close to the colonel, and felt amazement that he
was still alive. His cheek was laid open, a bullet had torn his thigh,
and a powder burn streaked his neck, but he felt these hurts not at all.
It was a nightmare from which there seemed no escape. He saw Blackbeard
rush at him with a raucous shout of:

"The scurvy young cockerel! He will ne'er crow again."

Colonel Stuart sprang between them, blades clashed, and they were swept
apart in another wave of jostling combat. A moment later the colonel
slipped and fell as a coal-black negro chopped at him with a broken
cutlass. Jack Cockrell flew at him and they wrestled until a hip-lock
threw the negro to the deck, where the colonel made him one pirate less.

Formidable as these outlaws were, they lacked the stern cohesion which
had been drilled into the sailors of the Royal Navy and likewise learned
in the hard school of the merchant service. Very slowly the odds were
shifting against Blackbeard's crew. It was unmistakable when Lieutenant
Maynard cut his way through to join Colonel Stuart, while the third
group of boarders was advancing little by little from the after quarter.
This meant that the force was gradually uniting in spite of the furious
efforts to scatter it.

And now there came an episode which lives in history two centuries after
that scene of carnage on the decks of the stranded brig. It has
preserved the name of a humble lieutenant of the Royal Navy and saved it
from the oblivion which is the common lot of most brave men who do and
dare when duty beckons.

Blackbeard was bleeding from a dozen wounds and yet his activity was
unabated. He was like a grizzly bear at bay. His men be