But that crew of miscreants had all heard of the derisive title which had been given to Bonnet, and now they saw without the slightest difficulty how little he knew of the various nautical points to which Blackbeard continually called his attention.
The vessel was dirty, it was ill-appointed; there was an air of reckless disorder which showed itself everywhere; but, apart from his evident distaste for dirt and griminess, the captain of the Revenge seemed to be very well satisfied with everything he saw. When he passed a small gun pointed across the deck, and with a nightcap hung upon a capstan bar thrust into its muzzle, there was such a great laugh that Bonnet looked around to see what the imprudent Greenway might be doing.
Many were the nautical points to which Blackbeard called his guest's attention and many the questions the grim pirate asked, but in almost all cases of the kind the tall gentleman with the cocked hat replied that he generally left those things to his sailing-master, being so much occupied with matters of more import.
Although he found no fault and made no criticisms, Bonnet was very much disgusted. Such a disorderly vessel, such an apparently lawless crew, excited his most severe mental strictures; and, although the great Blackbeard was to-day a very well-behaved person, Bonnet could not understand how a famous and successful captain should permit his vessel and his crew to get into such an unseamanlike and disgraceful condition.
On board the Revenge, as his sailing-master had remarked, there was the neatness of his kitchen and his store-houses; and, although he did not always know what to do with the nautical appliances which surrounded him, he knew how to make them look in good order. But he made few remarks, favourable or otherwise, and held himself loftier than before, with an air as if he might have been an admiral entire instead of resembling one only in clothes, and with ceremonious and even condescending politeness followed his host wherever he was led, above decks or below.
Ben Greenway had gone with his master about the ship with much of the air of one who accompanies a good friend to the place of execution.
Regardless of gibes or insults, whether they were directed at Bonnet or himself, he turned his face neither to the right nor to the left, and apparently regarded nothing that he heard. But while endeavouring to listen as little as possible to what was going on around him, he heard a great deal; but, strange to say, the railing and scurrility of the pirates did not appear to have a depressing influence upon his mind. In fact, he seemed in somewhat better spirits than when he came on board.