When the Revenge should be taken he would rush to the British captain, or any one in authority, and tell his tale.
It would be believed, he doubted not; even his uniform would help to prove he was no pirate; he would be taken away, he would reach Jamaica; he would see Kate; he would carry to her the great news of her father.
After that his life could take care of itself.
But now the blackness of darkness was over everything.

Those who were to have been his friends had vanished, the ship which was to have given him a new life had disappeared forever.

He was on board the pirate ship, bound for the shores of England--horrible shores to him--bound to the shores of England and to Blackbeard's Eliza! He was not a fool, this Dickory; he had no unwarrantable and romantic fears that in these enlightened days one man could say to another, "Go you, and marry the woman I have chosen for you." There was nothing silly or cowardly about him, but he knew Blackbeard.
Not one ray of hope thrust itself through his hands into his brain.

Hope had gone, gone to the bottom, and he was on his storm-tossed way to the waters of another continent.
But in the midst of his despair Dickory never thought of freeing himself, by a sudden bound, of the world and his woes.

So long as Kate should live he must live, even if it were to prove to himself, and to himself only, how faithful to her he could be.
It was dark when men came tumbling below, throwing themselves into hammocks and bunks, and Dickory prepared to turn in.