Dickory looked at him in amazement for a moment and then he ran into the cabin, soon returning with a sheet of paper and an English pencil.
The eyes of Captain Vince were now very bright, and a nervous strength came into his body. He raised himself upon his elbow, he clutched at the paper, and clapping it upon the deck began to write. Quickly his pencil moved; already he was feeling that his rum-given strength was leaving him, but several pages he wrote, and then he signed his name. Folding the sheet he stopped for a moment, feeling that he could do no more; but, gathering together his strength in one convulsive motion, he addressed the letter.
"Take that," he feebly said, "and swear ... that it shall be ...
delivered."
"I swear," said Dickory, as on his knees he took the blood-smeared letter. He hastily slipped it into the breast of his coat, and then he was barely able to move quick enough to keep the Englishman's head from striking the deck.
"How now!" sounded a harsh growl at his ear. "Get you into your cabin or you will be hurt. It is not time yet for the fleecing of corpses! I am choking for a glass of brandy. Get in and stay there!"
In another minute Blackbeard, refreshed, was running aft, the cut through his shoulder bleeding, but entirely forgotten.
There was no fighting now upon the deck of the Revenge; the conflict raged, but it had been transferred to the Badger. The sailors of the man-of-war had fought valiantly and stoutly, even impetuously, but their enemies--picked men from two pirate crews--had fought like wire-muscled devils. Ablaze with fury they had cut down the Badger's men, piling them upon their own fallen comrades; they had followed the brave fellows with oaths, cutlasses, and pistols as, little at a time and fighting all the while, they slowly clambered back into their own ship. The pirates had thrown their grapnels over the bulwarks of the man-of-war; they had followed, cut by cut, shot by shot, until they now stood upon the Badger, fighting with the same fury that they had just fought upon the blood-soaked Revenge. Blackbeard was not yet with them--whatever happened, Blackbeard must be refreshed--but now he sprang into the enemy's ship--that fine British man-of-war, the corvette Badger, which had so bravely sailed down upon his ship to capture her--and led the carnage.
They were tough men, those British seamen, tough in heart, tough in arms and body; they fought above decks and they fought below, and they laid many a pirate scoundrel dead; but they had met a foe which was too strong for them--a pack of brawny, hairy desperadoes, picked from two pirate crews. The first officer now commanding, panting, bleeding, and torn, groaned as he saw that his men could fight no longer, and he surrendered the Badger to the pirates.