“Not exactly,” replied his father. “But men often took to piracy for most peculiar reasons. For example, there was Major Stede Bonnet, also a native of Barbados. But unlike Red Legs, Major Bonnet, far from being a slave, was a most honored and well-to-do member of the colony. He was a gentleman by birth, well educated, possessed a large fortune and was an army officer. However, there was one fly in the gallant Major’s ointment. He had a nagging, scolding wife. But not until in 1716, when the Major began acting most strangely, did tongues begin to wag over him or his household. At that date Major Bonnet suddenly purchased a sloop, fitted her with ten guns and engaged a crew of seventy men. Then, indeed, did speculation become rife. To all inquiries the Major replied ‘wait’ and the mystery deepened as the shipwrights rigged the craft, and upon its stern appeared the name ‘Revenge.’ Then one dark night, the Revenge slipped out of the harbor and disappeared, but in a few months came tidings of her that were a nine days’ wonder in Barbados. Major Stede had turned pirate! The Revenge was cruising off the American coast, taking prizes right and left; she had become the terror of Philadelphia, Salem, Norfolk and other coast towns, and the Major, to add insult to injury had made Gardiner’s Island in Long Island Sound his headquarters. Evidently pirating had appealed to the Major as a peaceful life beside the nagging tongue of Mrs. Bonnet. “But the poor, hen-pecked Major’s career did not last long. He fell in with Teach, otherwise known as Blackbeard, who pretended to be an ally and then ruthlessly robbed the amateur pirate, and, a little later, the Major was captured off the Carolina coast. He managed to escape in a canoe, but the reward of seventy pounds sterling offered for him, dead or alive, soon brought results. He was retaken, tried at Charleston and hanged. After the long-winded lecture and flowery-worded harangue that the presiding judge inflicted upon the poor condemned man the Major must have really welcomed hanging, and as he did not even plead the ‘discomforts to be found in the married state’ as extenuating circumstances for his misdeeds the execution was carried out at once.” “That would have been funny if the poor Major hadn’t been hanged,” said Jack. “But please tell us about Blackbeard. Was he a buccaneer?”