THE TIDE DECIDES It was now September, and the weather was beautiful on the North Carolina coast.

Captain Thomas (late Bonnet) of the Royal James (late Revenge) had always enjoyed cool nights and invigorating morning air, and therefore it was that he said to his faithful servitor, Ben Greenway, when first he stepped out upon the deck as his vessel lay comfortably anchored in a little cove in the Cape Fear River, that he did not remember ever having been in a more pleasant harbour.

This well-tried pirate captain--Stede Bonnet, as we shall call him, notwithstanding his assumption of another name--was in a genial mood as he drank in the morning air.
From his point of view he had a right to be genial; he had a right to be pleased with the scenery and the air; he had a right to swear at the Scotchman, and to ask him why he did not put on a merrier visage on such a sparkling morning, for since he had first started out as Captain Thomas of the Royal James he had been a most successful pirate.

He had sailed up the Virginia coast; he had burned, he had sunk, he had robbed, he had slain; he had gone up the Delaware Bay, and the people in ships and the people on the coasts trembled even when they heard that his black flag had been sighted.
No man could now say that the former captain of the Revenge was not an accomplished and seasoned desperado.

Even the great Blackbeard would not have cared to give him nicknames, nor dared to play his blithesome tricks upon him; he was now no more Captain Nightcap to any man.