Thomas, which was
a British naval station, and where he declared he was going in order to
obtain a commission as a privateer.
Now the wily Bonnet had everything he wanted except a crew. Of course it
would not do for him, in his present respectable capacity, to go about
enlisting unemployed pirates, but at this point fortune again favored
him; he knew of a desert island not very far away where Blackbeard, at
the end of his last cruise, had marooned a large party of his men. This
heartless pirate had not wanted to take all of his followers into port,
because they might prove troublesome and expensive to him, and so he had
put a number of them on this island, to live or die as the case might
be. Bonnet went over to this island, and finding the greater part of
these men still surviving, he offered to take them to St. Thomas in his
vessel if they would agree to work the ship to port. This proposition
was of course joyfully accepted, and very soon the _Revenge_ was manned
with a complete crew of competent desperadoes.
All these operations took a good deal of time, and, at last, when
everything was ready for Bonnet to start out on his piratical cruise, he
received information which caused him to change his mind, and to set
forth on an errand of a very different kind. He had supposed that
Blackbeard, whom he had never forgiven for the shameful and treacherous
manner in which he had treated him, was still on shore enjoying himself,
but he was told by the captain of a small trading vessel that the old
pirate was preparing for another cruise, and that he was then in
Ocracoke Inlet.
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