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"To sail north, Phil, to some place civilized, where things happen documentably and get recorded official. And I think maybe the famous Blackbeard will be trapped and killed in some sea fight, in such a way that some of his blood will fall into the ocean ... and then I wouldn't be surprised if some stranger were to appear, who'll happen to know where I've hid all my lucre, and he won't have any reputation or previous history or fame to foul him up. I think he'll get a ship in some quiet way - hah! I'll bet Stede Bonnett will help out with that - and then make his way south to New Providence Island. I think he'll want to speak to you, Phil - and I think it'd be a good thing if you'd got the Carmichael back."
Davies nodded. "Do you ... want us to accept this pardon Rogers is bringing?"
"I don't see why not," Blackbeard said.
"Hear that, Jack?" Davies asked Shandy. "Back in the shop window again."
Shandy opened his mouth to answer, then closed it and just shook his head.
"He's too great a sinner, Phil," Blackbeard said, amusement rumbling in his voice.
Benjamin Hurwood covered the last ten yards in a sort of anxious, bounding prance, making the square wooden box tied to his belt jiggle and whirl wildly. "When do we leave"?" he screamed. "Don't you realize how essential it is that we hurry? He may kill her, he's certainly got the power now to overcome the protections she has."
Blackbeard ignored Hurwood. "I'm going north," he said, and plodded away back toward the fires.
Davies eyed the pale, trembling Hurwood speculatively. "Can you find 'em?"
"Of course I can find them - her, anyway." He slapped the wooden box irreverently. "This thing's a damn lodestone for her now, better than the pointer that led you to the Carmichael a month ago."
"We'll leave instantly," said Davies. "As soon as we get the Jenny manned. We - " He paused. "The Carmichael's crew," he said. "What's to become of them, the lads we can't carry on the Jenny?"
"Who cares?" yelled Hurwood. "Let them split up - half with Thatch, half with Bonnett. Damn my soul, what I'm going to do to that fat young worm when I find him! Prometheus never suffered as much as Leo Friend will, I promise you - "
"No," said Davies, still thoughtfully, "none of my lads sail north with Thatch ... I'll load the Jenny gunwale-deep with men before I permit that ... "
Hurwood had been dancing with impatience, and now the raging old man screwed his eyes shut and clenched his fist, and slowly rose up from the sand until he hovered unsupported with his boots dangling fully a yard above the ground. He opened his eyes a squint, hissed angrily and shut his eyes harder - and then was flung like a loose-jointed doll at the sea, and struck with an enormous splash out beyond where the breakers began to swell and roll in.
A number of pirates were on the beach, and several of them had paused in their various labors to gape at this performance, and now were staring wonderingly out at the falling splash spray.
"Get him," Davies rasped at the nearest cluster of them, and the men leaped to the boat, dragged it down to the water and got busy with the oars. To Shandy, Davies muttered, "You want to find the girl, right?"
"Right."
"And I want to find my ship. So let's get Hurwood aboard the Jenny before he perfects his flying and flaps away to find them without us."
The sailors had carried and shoved their wide-beamed boat out into the surf. "Don't bring him back," Davies shouted to them. "Take him on to the Jenny!"
"Aye aye, Phil," yelled back one of the laboring rowers.
Davies seized Shandy's shoulder. "Back to the camp, Jack," he said. "Send as many of the Carmichael's lads to Bonnett's crew as the Revenge can hold - the rest bring down here, and get 'em aboard the Jenny. But none of our mates sail on the Queen Anne's Revenge, understand?"
"Sure do, Phil," Shandy said. "I'll have 'em down here getting into the boats in three minutes."
"Good. Go."
Shandy had no sooner run back uphill to the crowd around the smoking charcoal piles than Woefully Fat grabbed him by the upper arm. The bocor's brown eyes glared at him out of the broad black face. "You damn slow, boy," the man said. "I thought you'd fix things upriver. Too late now for it to be any kind of easy - now you got to kill him an' burn him ashore."
"Kill who?" blurted Shandy, forgetting the man was deaf.
"You ain't sailin' on the Queen Anne's Revenge," said Woefully Fat.
Belatedly remembering the bocor's deafness, Shandy shook his head and put on an earnestly agreeing expression. He was standing on tiptoe and hoping the giant bocor wouldn't lift him any higher. "No sir!" he yelled.
"Di'n't wait five years for you so you could be a puppet o' his, and die just to provide more blood an' make his death scene look more convincin'."
"I ain't going!" said Shandy loudly, exaggerating the movement of his lips. Then he added, "What do you mean, 'five years'?"
Woefully Fat looked around - no one was paying particular attention to them, and he lowered his voice to a whisper that was somehow still a rumble. "When the white men's war ended, an' anybody could see that Thatch had learned too much."
