to you, and now, if you please, I will take my leave. I have not been
gratified by the conduct of your crew, but I did not expect that their
captain would address me in such discourteous words." And with this he
reached out his hand for his hat.

Blackbeard brought down his hand heavily upon the table.

"Sit where you are!" he exclaimed. "I have that to say to you which you
shall hear whether you like my vessel, my crew, or me. You are no
sailor, Stede Bonnet of Bridgetown, and you don't belong to the free
companions, who are all good men and true and can sail the ships they
command. You are a defrauder and a cheat; you are nothing but a
landsman, a plough-tail sugar-planter!"

At this insult Bonnet rose to his feet and his hand went to his sword.

"Sit down!" roared Blackbeard; "an you do not listen to me, I'll cut off
this parley and your head together. Sit down, sir."

Bonnet sat down, pale now and trembling with rage. He was not a coward,
but on board this ship he must give heed to the words of the desperado
who commanded it.

"You have no right," continued Blackbeard, "to strut about on the
quarter-deck of that fine vessel, the Revenge; you have no right to
hoist above you the Jolly Roger, and you have no right to lie right and
left and tell people you are a pirate. A pirate, forsooth! you are no
pirate. A pirate is a sailor, and you are no sailor! You are no better
than a blind man led by a dog: if the dog breaks away from him he is
lost, and if the sailing-masters you pick up one after another break
away from you, you are lost. It is a cursed shame, Stede Bonnet, and it
shall be no longer. At this moment, by my own right and for the sake of
every man who sails under the Jolly Roger, I take away from you the
command of the Revenge."

Now Bonnet could not refrain from springing to his feet. "Take from me
the Revenge!" he cried, "my own vessel, bought with my own money! And
how say you I am not a pirate? From Massachusetts down the coast into
these very waters I have preyed upon commerce, I have taken prizes, I
have burned ships, I have made my name a terror."

Now his voice grew stronger and his tones more angry.

"Not a pirate!" he cried. "Go ask the galleons and the merchantmen I
have stripped and burned; go ask their crews, now wandering in misery
upon desert shores, if they be not already dead. And by what right, I
ask, do you come to such an one as I am and declare that, having put me
in the positio