He took his young admiral into his cabin and laid before him his dazzling future.
Dickory sat speechless, almost breathless.

As he listened he could feel himself turn cold.

Had any one else been talking to him in this strain he would have shouted with laughter, but people did not laugh at Blackbeard.
When the pirate had said all and was gazing triumphantly at poor Dickory, the young man gasped a word in answer; he could not accept this awful fate without as much as a wave of the hand in protest.
"But, sir," said he, "if--" Blackbeard's face grew black; he bent his head and lowered upon the pale Dickory, then, with a tremendous blow, he brought down his fist upon the table.
"If Eliza will not have you," he roared; "if that girl will not take you when I offer you to her; if she or her mother as much as winks an eyelash in disobedience of my commands, I will take them by the hair of their heads and I will throw them into the sea.

If she will not have you," he repeated, roaring as if he were shouting through a speaking trumpet in a storm, "if I thought that, youngster, I would burn the house with both of them in it, and the rum I had bought to make a jolly wedding should be poured on the timbers to make them blaze.

Let no notions like that enter your mind, my boy.