Governor Eden enters, portly in a London flowered-silk waistcoat, stylish French shoes and peruke, high-pointed and white-powdered. He gasps a little at the gang jammed into the room and glances sharply over at Tobias Knight, Secretary of the Province, who a moment ago was scratching with his quill pen an encouraging story of graft to the Proprietors at home, but who now is nervously pulling his sword more accessibly across his round fat knees. Neither he nor the governor had even seen anything quite like that in old Pall Mall, you know. “Takin’ the Act, y’honor,” growled Blackbeard, leering at constituted authority. “Aye,” chorus, froglike, his bully boys. The job is soon done. With upraised right hands one and all swear to leave off piracy. They come in children of the rope; they depart free and law-abiding men. It is very easy. All leave, that is, save Blackbeard. “I salvages ships, your honors,” thunders this gentleman, spreading himself out on a chair so that his beard should flow in its glory like a blanket over his person, while all its fancy little curly-cues, ringlets and twists dance with every movement of his chin. “My real trade, your honors--ship salvager. Mebbe I’ll have business here. Lost ships is what I go for and lost ships I finds. “No need for a good ship to be lost while Blackbeard’s around to take ’em home again. No occasion to leave a lost ship to drift around till them dirty seadogs of pirates mauls ’em over. Law says lost ships must be reported to the governor, and now I abide the law.” “How d’ye mean, Captain?” says the governor. “D’ye pull ’em off the rocks?” The audience chamber--if it may be so called--shakes with the visitor’s laughing. “Ye don’t know rocks, your honor, beggin’ pardon; rocks don’t let nothing go oncet they get aholt. Deserted ships I picks up; ships with a little water in ’em don’t always go down as fast as the master fears. “There’s where I comes in. I get a ship like that; I comes in to you. Says I, ‘Your honor, I have salvaged a ship.’ Says your honor, ‘Accordin’ to law, I declares you to have salvage of her.’ I sell her for a good price. Says I to me, ‘The governor, his honor, works hard; he ought to have his wages.’ Says I to you, ‘Your honor will perhaps accept a little present.’ ‘Captain Blackbeard,’ says you, ‘have a jog of rum.’ We all stands up and drinks the king’s ’ealth.” Governor Eden claps his hands smartly, and the black servitor jumps in. “Boy, bring the Madeira and glasses for three.” III Governor Eden, in his corrupt connivance with Blackbeard, was not representative of the public opinion of the Carolinas in 1718. The proprietary provinces--for these things were shortly before the revolution which placed them directly under the Crown--had become tired of pirates.