ough fellows
should be excited by the appearance among them of a prim and sedate
Scotch Presbyterian.

But that crew of miscreants had all heard of the derisive title which
had been given to Bonnet, and now they saw without the slightest
difficulty how little he knew of the various nautical points to which
Blackbeard continually called his attention.

The vessel was dirty, it was ill-appointed; there was an air of reckless
disorder which showed itself everywhere; but, apart from his evident
distaste for dirt and griminess, the captain of the Revenge seemed to be
very well satisfied with everything he saw. When he passed a small gun
pointed across the deck, and with a nightcap hung upon a capstan bar
thrust into its muzzle, there was such a great laugh that Bonnet looked
around to see what the imprudent Greenway might be doing.

Many were the nautical points to which Blackbeard called his guest's
attention and many the questions the grim pirate asked, but in almost
all cases of the kind the tall gentleman with the cocked hat replied
that he generally left those things to his sailing-master, being so
much occupied with matters of more import.

Although he found no fault and made no criticisms, Bonnet was very much
disgusted. Such a disorderly vessel, such an apparently lawless crew,
excited his most severe mental strictures; and, although the great
Blackbeard was to-day a very well-behaved person, Bonnet could not
understand how a famous and successful captain should permit his vessel
and his crew to get into such an unseamanlike and disgraceful condition.
On board the Revenge, as his sailing-master had remarked, there was the
neatness of his kitchen and his store-houses; and, although he did not
always know what to do with the nautical appliances which surrounded
him, he knew how to make them look in good order. But he made few
remarks, favourable or otherwise, and held himself loftier than before,
with an air as if he might have been an admiral entire instead of
resembling one only in clothes, and with ceremonious and even
condescending politeness followed his host wherever he was led, above
decks or below.

Ben Greenway had gone with his master about the ship with much of the
air of one who accompanies a good friend to the place of execution.
Regardless of gibes or insults, whether they were directed at Bonnet or
himself, he turned his face neither to the right nor to the left, and
apparently regarded nothing tha