“But, sir—­” cried the merchant.

“Very good,” said the pirate captain, “you talk it over.  I’m going to the town now and I’ll row out to you this afternoon and get your instructions.”

And with this he got over the side.

Mr. Delaplaine said nothing of this visit, but waited on deck until the captain came on board, and then many were the questions he asked about the pirate Ichabod.

“Well, well!” the captain exclaimed, “that’s just like him; he’s a rare one.  Ichabod is not his name, of course, and I’m told he belongs to a good English family—­a younger son, and having taken his inheritance, he invested it in a sloop and turned pirate.  He has had some pretty good fortune, I hear, in that line, but it hasn’t profited him much, for he is a terrible gambler, and all that he makes by his prizes he loses at cards, so he is nearly always poor.  Blackbeard sometimes helps him, so I have heard—­which he ought to do, for the old pirate has won bags of money from him—­but he is known as a good fellow, and to be trusted.  I have heard of his sailing a long way back to Belize to pay a gambling debt he owed, he having captured a merchantman in the meantime.”

“Very honourable, indeed,” remarked Mr. Delaplaine.

“As pirates go, a white crow,” said the other.  “Now, sir, if you and your ladies want to go to Blackbeard, and a rare desire is that, I swear, you cannot do better than let Captain Ichabod take you.  You will be safe, I am sure of that, and there is every reason to think he will find his man.”

When Mr. Delaplaine went below with his extraordinary news, Dame Charter turned pale and screamed.

“Sail in a pirate ship?” she cried.  “I’ve seen the men belonging to one of them, and as to going on board and sailing with them, I’d rather die just where I am.”

To the good Dame’s astonishment and that of Mr. Delaplaine, Kate spoke up very promptly.  “But you cannot die here, Dame Charter; and if you ever want to see your son again you have got to go to him.  Which is also the case with me and my father.  And, as there is no other way for us to go, I say, let us accept this man’s offer if he be what my uncle thinks he is.  After all, it might be as safe for us on board his ship as to be on a merchantman and be captured by pirates, which would be likely enough in those regions where we are obliged to go; and so I say let us see the man, and if he don’t frighten us too much let us sail with him and get my father and Dickory.”

“It would be a terrible danger, a terrible danger,” said Mr. Delaplaine.

“But, uncle,” urged Kate, “everything is a terrible danger in the search we’re upon; let us then choose a danger that we know something about, and which may serve our needs, rather than one of which we’re ignorant and which cannot possibly be of any good to us.”