But for their Frocks, Gents!
Oh dearest reader, prithee set down and hast thy smelling salts close at hand. As we near the second anniversary of the sinking of old Tetch up Carolina way, it is a reminder that yond is not all as it appears. On valorous authority we hath learned from Master Kevin Duffus, who didst overhear in a coffee house this bite of battle observation. The gent was eager to report the conversation as heard. The fabled sloop Adventure Twas the morn of December 3, 1718, and already fast in to the season of early winter storms off the Carolina coast. Indeed ice wast seen already chunking. The shore was full of half consumed plunder, sugar and cocoa and rum and old Teach's crew was moving slow. Wherefore were those gents so late in Ocracoke when most their fellow plunderers be back in the warm seas of the West Indies? And the most impossible question, how didst on this Saturday morning battle, the fusty pirate who kneweth these waters like the back of his hand, be pinned in the Adventure by the