"Gone again!" Captain Ichabod's face grew clouded.
"Gone north of Charles Town," he exclaimed, "that's bad, bedad, that's very bad.

You are sure he did not sail southward ?" he asked of the captain of the brig.
That gruff mariner was in a strange state of mind.

He had just been captured by a pirate, and in the next moment had made, what might be a very profitable sale, to a respectable merchant, of the goods the pirate was about to take from him.

Moreover, the said pirate seemed to be in the employ of said merchant, and altogether, things seemed to him to be in as fearsome a mix as they had seemed to Captain Ichabod, but he brought his mind down to the question he had been asked.
"No doubt about that," said he; "there were some of his men in the town--for they are afraid of nobody--and they were not backward in talking." "That upsets things badly," said Captain Ichabod, without unclouding his brow.

"With my slow vessel and my empty purse, bedad, I don't see how I am ever goin' to catch Blackbeard if he has gone north.