Jack lay in his berth staring into the darkness; his ears seemed to hum and tingle with the black stillness that surrounded him. He felt intensely wide awake as though he could never sleep again. Teeming thoughts passed vividly through his brain. Visions of all he had seen during the day—the sandy shore, the distant strip of pine woods, the restless, crawling waters between—he could almost see the water. But gradually thoughts and visions intermingled, and almost before he knew it he had drifted off into the ocean of sleep.
SINCE the capital of Virginia had been removed from Jamestown to Williamsburg, and since the Governor’s palace and the Government House had been established there, it had become the center of fashion in the colony. Just now the Court was in session, and the Council sitting, and Governor Spottiswood was holding court every Thursday.
The day was rather close and warm, but there was an unusually large representation of the provincial aristocracy present. It was still not late in the afternoon, but there had already been a good many arrivals, and the gabbling sound of talking filled the assembly room. The Governor, where he stood at the end of the room, was the center of a group of gentlemen who were clustered about him and in his immediate vicinity. It was almost difficult for one to get past them to pay respect to his Excellency. A group, perhaps, would move a little aside to make way for newly arriving ladies and gentlemen, but such as were now coming in could only get to the Governor with a sense of discomfort and of being crowded. In parts of the room more distant from the Governor the talk was, perhaps, more of social matters, but near his Excellency the knots of men discussed things relating to colonial affairs.
Just then the talk was about a renewed trouble with pirates, who had begun again to infest the mouth of the bay and the North Carolina sounds.
It was just about this time that Blackbeard had broken his pardon and was again stopping vessels sailing between Virginia and the Carolinas.
The _Pearl_ and the _Lyme_, ships of war, were then lying at Jamestown, and some of the officers had come over to pay their respects at the palace. Some of them were standing near listening to Councillor Page, who was just then speaking of the latest depredations of Blackbeard. “He was lying down at Ocracock,” said Mr. Page. “I had a sloop coming from the Tar River with some shingle thatch for my new warehouse. Well, the villains stopped her and came aboard of her. They overhauled her cargo, and I do believe if they’d known ‘t was for me they would have thrown it all overboard. But Williams said naught about that, and so they did not know whose ‘t was. There was nothing on board to serve the villains’ turn, and they might just as well have let the sloop go; but no, there that wretch, Blackbeard, held her for nearly two days, so that she might not give the alarm of his being there to any incoming vessels. Williams—he was the captain of my sloop—Williams said that while he was lying there under the pirates’ guns, he himself saw Blackbeard stop and levy upon some nine vessels of different sorts, rummaging all over their cargoes. He said it was chiefly rum and cloth the villain was after. Williams said that ‘t was reported the villains held every boat that came through the inlet, and would neither let them go in nor come out, but made ‘em all lie at anchor under his guns. He hath two armed sloops now and a crew altogether of some forty or sixty men, and twice or thrice as many more to call upon if he chooses.”