With blood streaming from the wound and dripping from the braided ends of his beard, the maddened pirate flung down his pistol, whipped out his cutlass, and, swearing horribly, leaped at the officer, who also had drawn his sword. Then followed a duel, a hand-to-hand struggle to the death between the gigantic, cursing, horrible-featured pirate and the young officer—a contest between brute strength and trained swordsmanship. Chasing each other back and forth across the blood-covered deck, stumbling and tripping over dead and wounded men, they hacked and parried and thrust. Again and again the officer’s sword went home, more than once the pirate’s cutlass found its mark, until at last a terrific blow of Blackbeard’s heavy blade snapped his opponent’s light sword at the hilt and the lieutenant was at the pirate’s mercy. With a blood-curdling yell and a terrible oath, Teach swung his cutlass and struck with all his failing strength, expecting to cut his enemy down with a single blow. But Maynard, leaping back, escaped, the stroke falling short and merely slicing off several fingers from the officer’s hand. Before Teach could strike again, ere he could raise his arm, one of Maynard’s men leaped forward, his naval hanger flashed, and the pirate chief staggered back, his head lolling on one side, his neck half severed. But even then, with his life-blood spouting like a crimson fountain from the gaping wound, with his head rolling horribly on his shoulders, Blackbeard swung his cutlass and with a mighty blow cut the brave sailor down. Knowing his doom was sealed, realizing his death was but a matter of moments, the pirate was still game. Kicking off his shoes, that his feet might not slip upon the bloody planks, he backed to the bulwarks, fighting off a half-dozen men who fell upon him. Dripping with blood from a score of wounds, holding his all but decapitated head in place with one hand, he roared like a maddened bull, drew a pistol from his sash, cocked it, and with a last superhuman effort aimed at the oncoming men. But the piece was never fired; before his finger could pull the trigger, before a swinging blade could reach him, his hands fell at his sides, his head dropped forward in ghastly fashion on his blood-drenched beard, and he slumped to the deck, dead. Those of the pirate crew still alive had leaped into the water; the fight was over, the battle won, the notorious, inhuman Blackbeard was no more. Cutting the sinews and muscles that still kept Teach’s head and body together, the victorious Maynard suspended the gruesome trophy at his sloop’s bowsprit end, and with thirteen captured pirates under hatches, sailed into Bath Town, North Carolina, where the unlucky thirteen were promptly hanged and Lieutenant Maynard received his well-merited and hard-won reward.