So he called himself Captain
Thomas, by which name he was afterwards known.
When these preliminaries had been arranged, he gathered his crew
together and announced that instead of going to St. Thomas to get a
commission as a privateer, he had determined to keep on in his old
manner of life, and that he wished them to understand that not only was
he a pirate captain, but that they were a pirate crew. Many of the men
were very much surprised at this announcement, for they had thought it a
very natural thing for the green-hand Bonnet to give up pirating after
he had been so thoroughly snubbed by Blackbeard, and they had not
supposed that he would ever think again of sailing under a black flag.
However, the crew's opinion of the green-hand captain had been a good
deal changed. In his various cruises he had learned a good deal about
navigation, and could now give very fair orders, and his furious pursuit
of Blackbeard had also given him a reputation for reckless bravery which
he had not enjoyed before. A man who was chafing and fuming for a chance
of a hand-to-hand conflict with the greatest pirate of the day must be a
pretty good sort of a fellow from their point of view. Moreover, their
strutting and stalking captain, so recently balked of his dark revenge,
was a very savage-looking man, and it would not be pleasant either to
try to persuade him to give up his piratical intention, or to decline to
join him in carrying it out; so the whole of the crew, minor officers
and men, changed their minds about going to St.
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