If he should really go overboard with a bullet in his brain, farewell to Kate Bonnet, farewell to his mother! He was yet a very young man, and it had been but a little while since he had been wandering barefooted over the ships at Bridgetown, selling the fruit of his mother's little farm.

Since that he had loved and lived so long that he could not calculate the period, and now he was a man and stood trembling at the point where he was to decide to begin life as a pirate or end everything.

Before Blackbeard had turned his lowering visage from his retreating benefactor, Dickory had decided that, whatever might happen, he would not of his own free-will leave life and fair Kate Bonnet.
"And so you are to be my first lieutenant," said Blackbeard, his face relaxing.

"I am glad of that.

There was nothing needed on this ship but a decent man.