"Pull out to sea, Cap'n Bonnet. And 'ware this coast. The soldiers are on my heels. Old Trimble Rogers sends a fare-ye-well."
The boat was wrenched about in a trice and moved away from the island, soon disappearing in the direction of the bar. The major's men had shot at it but without effect. When they had rushed to capture the fugitive who had shouted the warning, they found him prone upon the sand. There was not a scratch on him and yet he was quite dead. The prodigious exertion had broken his heart, ventured the major, and it had ceased to beat. His body would be prepared for Christian burial because of the esteem in which he was already held by many of the townspeople.
To Jack Cockrell and Joe Hawkridge it was sad news indeed but tender-hearted Bill Saxby mourned like one who had lost a parent. He closed the shop for a day and hung black ribbons on the knob. They agreed that the end had come for Trimble Rogers as he would have wished it, giving his life in loyal service to a friend and master. And perhaps it was better thus than for the creeping disabilities of old age to overtake him.
"He knew he was liable to pop off," said Bill, "with the rheumatism getting closer to his heart all the time. And he told me, did Trimble, that his share of the treasure was to go to the poor and needy of the town. Orphans and such was Trimble's weakness."
A SMALL sloop was making its leisurely way up the Carolina coast with a crew of a dozen men all told. The skipper was Captain Jonathan Wellsby who was taking this holiday cruise before sailing for England to command a fine new ship in the colonial trade. In the cabin were Jack Cockrell and Joe Hawkridge, Councilor Peter Arbuthnot Forbes, and that brisk young linen draper William Saxby. In the forecastle were trusty seamen who had sailed in the _Plymouth Adventure_. The sloop's destination was Cherokee Inlet and she was equipped with tackle and gear for a peculiar kind of fishing.
For once they made a voyage without fear of pirates. Safely the sloop passed in by the outlying cay where the charred bones of Blackbeard's brig were washed by the surf. An anchorage was found in the bight where the _Revenge_ had tarried, close by the beach and the greensward of the pirates' old camp. After diligent preparation all hands manned a boat which pulled into the mouth of the sluggish creek. With axes to clear the entanglements and men enough to shove over the muddy shoals the boat was slowly forced up-stream and then into the smaller creek at the fork of the waters.