Blackbeard: Buccaneer (ePub)

This book was written over 90 years ago and is set in Charles town, Carolina in 1718. The protagonist is Jack Cockrell, a young man from a good background. The tale follows his adventures and they involve Stede Bonnet & Edward 'Blackbeard' Teach. Excerpt: "The year of 1718 seems very dim and far away, but the tall lad who sauntered down to the harbour of Charles Town, South Carolina, on a fine, bright morning, was much like the youngsters of this generation. His clothes were quite different, it is true, and he lived in a queer, rough world, but he detested grammar and arithmetic and loved adventure, and would have made a sturdy tackle for a modern high-school football team. He wore a peaked straw hat of Indian[8] weave, a linen shirt open at the throat, short breeches with silver buckles at the knees, and a flint-lock pistol hung from his leather belt. He passed by scattered houses and stores which were mere log huts loopholed for defence, with shutters and doors of hewn plank heavy enough to stop a musket ball. The unpaved lanes wandered between mud holes in which pigs wallowed enjoyably. Negro slaves, half-naked and bearing heavy burdens, jabbered the dialects of the African jungle from which they had been kidnapped a few months before. Yemassee Indians clad in tanned deer-skins bartered with the merchants and hid their hatred of the English. Jovial, hard-riding gentlemen galloped in from the indigo plantations and dismounted at the tavern to drink and gamble and fight duels at the smallest excuse. Young Jack Cockrell paid scant heed to these accustomed sights but walked as far as the wharf built of palmetto piling. The wide harbour and the sea that flashed beyond the outer bar were ruffled by a piping breeze out of the northeast. The only vessel at anchor was a heavily sparred brig whose bulwarks were high enough to hide the rows of cannon behind the closed ports.'