Page:Paine--Lost ships and lonely seas.djvu/279

Rh soon as they were singed and scorched. The same culinary method was employed for half a dozen Westphalia hams and a sow with a dozen little pigs. A few finicky pirates commanded the ship's cook, under pain of death, to boil the meat in the great copper caldrons designed for the slaves' porridge.

The prodigious banquet made these unmannerly guests feel in better humor, and they even told their surgeon to dress the wounds of the Bird's sailors. They amused themselves by playing foot-ball with Captain Snelgrave's excellent gold watch, and drank themselves into a state of boisterous joviality. The old record puts it mildly, to say the least, in affirming that "the captain's situation was by no means an agreeable one, even under these circumstances, as ferocious men are generally capricious. He now fared very hard, enduring great fatigue with patience, and submitting resignedly to the Almighty will."

Before the wild night ended he was taken aboard the pirates' flagship, where he was questioned by a sort of commodore or commander-in-chief of the squadron. His name was Cocklyn, and he had ambitions to conduct operations on a scale even larger. He wanted to win over the Bird's crew and to fly his black pennant from her, as his talk disclosed, and this was why the lives of her company had been