Captain Vince stood and gazed over the water, sometimes with his glass and sometimes without it.  Here now was the end of his fuming, his raging, his long and untiring search.  All the anxious weariness of long voyaging, all the impatience of watching, all the irritation of waiting had gone.  The notorious vessel in which the father of Kate Bonnet had made himself a terror and a scourge was now almost within his reach.  The beneficent vessel by which the father of Kate Bonnet should give to him his life’s desire was so near to him that he could have sent a musket ball into her had he chosen to fire.  It was so near to him that he could now, with his glass, read the word “Revenge” on her bow.  His brows were knit, his jaws were set tight, his muscles hardened themselves with energy.

Again the orders were passed, that when the men of the corvette boarded the pirate they were to cut down the rascals without mercy, and not one of them was to draw sword or pistol against the pirate captain.  He would be attended to by their commander.

Vince knew the story of Stede Bonnet; he knew that early in life he had been in the army, and that it was likely that he understood the handling of a sword.  But he knew also that he himself was one of the best swordsmen in the royal navy.  He yearned to cross blades with the man whose blood should not be shed, whose life should be preserved throughout the combat as if he were a friend and not a foe, who should surrender to him his sword and give to him his daughter.

“They’re a brave lot, those bloody rascals,” said one of the men of the Badger.

“They’ve a fool of a captain,” said another; “he knows not the difference between a British man-of-war and a Spanish galleon, but we shall teach him that.”

Slowly they came together, the Revenge and the Badger, the bow of one pointed east and the bow of the other to the west; from neither vessel there came a word; the low waves could be heard flapping against their sides.  Suddenly there rang out from the man-of-war the order to make fast.  The grapnels flew over the bulwarks of the pirate, and in a moment the two vessels were as one.  Then, with a great shout, the men of the Badger leaped and hurled themselves upon the deck of the Revenge, and upon that deck and from behind bulwarks there rose, yelling and howling and roaring, the picked men of two pirate crews, quick, furious, and strong as tigers, the hate of man in their eyes and the love of blood in their hearts.  Like a wave of massacre they threw themselves against the drilled masses of the Badger’s crew, and with yells and oaths and curses and cries the battle raged.

With a sudden dash the captain of the man-of-war plunged through the ranks of the combatants and stood upon the middle of the deck; his quick eyes shot here and there; wherever he might be, he sought the captain of the pirate ship.  In an instant a huge man bounded aft and made one long step towards him.  Vast in chest and shoulder, and with mighty limbs, fiery-eyed, hairy, horribly fantastic, Blackbeard stood, with great head lowered for the charge.