Page:Paine--Lost ships and lonely seas.djvu/62

36 As a final touch to affect the modern reader with a sense of comedy and the captain with additional woe, the pirates fished out the Exertion's consignments of furniture and, for lack of space below, sailed off with chairs lashed to the rail in rows and tables hung in the rigging. There now appears the figure of the pirate commander himself, for Bolidar was merely the lieutenant, or executive officer. To Captain Lincoln, gloomily watching the pirate schooner in the offing, with her picturesque garniture of hand-made New England furniture, came Bolidar with five men, his own personal armament consisting of a blunderbuss, cutlass, a long knife, and a pair of pistols. This fearsome lieutenant took Captain Lincoln by the arm, led him aside, and imparted:

"My capitan sends me for your wash."

Properly resentful, the master of the Exertion replied:

"Damn your eyes! I have no clothes, nor any soap to wash with. You have stolen them all."

"Ah, ha, but I will have your wash, pronto!" cried Bolidar, waving the blunderbuss. "What you call him that makes tick-tock, same as the clock?"

Disgustedly Captain Lincoln extracted his watch from the place where he had hidden it. The cloud