Page:Paine--Lost ships and lonely seas.djvu/50

28 , "Take good care of them, for I am afraid you have fallen into bad hands."

The pirates then sent a boat to the Exertion with more men and arms, leaving a heavy guard on board and taking Captain Lincoln and his Yankee seamen off to their own low, rakish craft, where they served out the rum and vainly tried to persuade them to enlist, with promise of dazzling booty. Captain Lincoln was not at all attracted by this business opportunity, and sadly he returned to his schooner, where he found Lieutenant Bolidar in the cabin and the place in a sorry mess. It is well known that, whatever their other virtues, pirates as a class had no manners. With a few exceptions the best of them lived like pigs and behaved like hooligans. The captain's narrative declares:

They had emptied a case of liquors, and broken a cheese to pieces and crumbled it on the table and the cabin floor and, elated with their prize as they called it, they had drunk so much as to make them desperately abusive. I was permitted to lie down in my berth but, reader, if you have ever been awakened by a gang of armed desperadoes who have taken possession of your habitation in the midnight hour, you can imagine my feelings. Sleep was a stranger to me and anxiety was my guest. Bolidar, however, pretended friendship and flattered me with the prospect of being set at liberty, but I found him, as I suspected, a consummate hypocrite. Indeed, his very looks indicated it.