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Not only did he disqualify himself for the role I had planned for him, subtly enough for me not to have noticed until it was too late and he'd got himself captured, but he also remembered and appropriated - pirated! - the long-planned defeat scene I intend to enact - re-enact! - today! And the two magicians I sent to fetch him from that island came back without him, and wounded ... and this last Sunday, at exactly noon, I stopped being psychically aware of him. Apparently he found a loophole through which to escape me - the loop at the end of a hangman's rope.
"Hailing distance in a moment," croaked Richards, his face slick with sweat in spite of the chill that made his breath visible as steam.
"Hailing distance now," said Blackbeard. He squared his massive shoulders and then with slow, measured steps walked up to the bow and braced one booted foot on the bowsprit trunk. He filled his lungs, then shouted at the Navy sloops, "Damn you for villains, who are you? And from whence came you?"
There was commotion on the deck of the nearest sloop, and then the British ensign flag mounted fluttering to the top of the mast. "You may see by our colors," came a shouted reply, "we are no pirates!"
Almost formally, as if this were a rhetorical exchange in an old, old litany, Blackbeard called, "Come aboard so that I may see who you are."
"I cannot spare my boat," yelled back the Navy captain, "but I will come aboard of you as soon as I can, with my sloop!"
Blackbeard smiled and seemed to relax. He shouted back, "Damnation seize my soul if I give you quarters, or take any from you."
"We expect none, nor will extend any!"
Blackbeard turned to Richards. "I'd say that's clear," he remarked. "Run up our colors and cut our cable - we're off."
"Aye aye, cap'n," said Richards. "Leaving the prize?" he added, pointing at the captured merchant sloop.
"Sure, I never did care about the prize."
The foremost Navy vessel tacked north, evidently intending to loop around and prevent any flight by Blackbeard to the east, but in a moment Blackbeard's sloop, the Adventure, was skating west before the wind across the smooth surface of Pamlico Sound, aiming straight as an arrow between the other Navy sloop and the Ocracoke Island shore, toward the inlet and the open sea beyond. Every man aboard the Adventure except for Blackbeard was holding his breath, for the water was hardly more than six feet deep, and the tide was ebbing. Several even dug coins out of their pockets and flung them over the side - the sun hadn't yet cleared the hump of the island, and the coins fell lustreless into the smoke-gray water.
Richards was looking north, at the sloop that had hailed them. He laughed softly. "They're aground again!" he whispered.
Feeling suddenly very tired, Blackbeard drew one of his pistols and said, "Loose sails. We're going to pause to give these boys a broadside."
Richards spun to face him. "What? We've got it right now, we can get away if we - "
Blackbeard raised the pistol and poked Richards in the mouth with the muzzle. "Loose sails and ready the starboard guns, damn you!"
"Aye!" said Richards in a voice that was nearly a sob, turning to relay the order. Most of the men gaped in surprise, but they could see the pistol, and Hands' retirement was still fresh in everyone's memory, and so they obeyed, and the Adventure slowed, sails fluttering loosely, and coasted up alongside the Navy sloop.
"Fire starboard guns!" Blackbeard roared, and the Adventure rocked as the guns went off, fouling the dawn air with billows of acrid smoke and raising a clamoring scatter of alarmed sea birds.
The smoke drifted away west, toward the inlet, and Black-beard laughed to see the Navy vessel wallowing helplessly, her rigging blown to tatters and her rail and gunwales a ruin of torn wood.
"Set sail now?" pleaded Richards, eyeing the Ocracoke shore that was drawing slowly closer as the tide ebbed.
Blackbeard was looking at it too. "Yes," he said thoughtfully after a moment, for it was too late.
The wind, fitful at best, had died, and though the pirates crowded on every square yard of canvas like starving fishers spreading nets, the Adventure was drifting.
The sloop to the north had got afloat again and the men aboard her had got their oars out and were rowing toward the Adventure.
With the gentlest of jars, the Adventure went aground.
"Hurry up reloading the starboard guns!" called Blackbeard. "You lads," he added to a gang of pirates who were desperately flinging barrels and lengths of chain over the side, "nevermind that, you can't raise her faster than the tide's dropping her! Look to your pistols and cutlasses."
The remaining Navy sloop was closing steadily. "Hold fire until I say," said Blackbeard.
"Right," said Richards, who had drawn his cutlass and was slowly whirling it at arm's length in a warm-up exercise. Now that there was no hope of avoiding the encounter, most of his anxiety had disappeared. He grinned at Blackbeard. "I hope this is the closest you ever do cut it."
The giant pirate briefly squeezed Richards' shoulder. "Never this close again," he said quietly. "I promise you."
The Navy sloop was only a couple of dozen yards away now, and Blackbeard could even hear, over the knocking of the oars in the ports, grunts of effort from the rowers. He knew that the Navy captain must be considering when to discharge his own guns, and when things were a moment short of being lined up, Blackbeard called, "Fire."
Again the Adventure's starboard guns boomed, lashing small-shot like a whistling scythe across the other vessel's deck. Bodies, punched off their feet, spun away like kicked debris in a spray of splinters and blood, and the pirates cheered - but Blackbeard, standing on the Adventure's bowsprit, saw the young officer in charge hurriedly herding all his remaining ambulatory sailors belowdecks.
