Page:The true story book.djvu/73

 the quartermaster told them, through the speaking-trumpet, that they had taken a brave prize, with all manner of good victuals and fresh provisions on board.

Just after this, Cochlyn, the pirate captain, ordered them to dress a quantity of these victuals; so they took many geese, turkeys, fowls, and ducks, making our people cut their heads off and pull the great feathers out of their wings, but they would not stay till the other feathers were pulled off. All these they put into our great furnace, which would boil victuals for five hundred negroes, together with several Westphalia hams and a large pig. This strange medley filled the furnace, and the cook was ordered to boil them out of hand.

As soon as the pirate ship had done firing, I asked the quartermaster's leave for our surgeon to dress my poor people that had been wounded, and I likewise went to have my arm dressed, it being very much bruised by the blow given me by the pirate boatswain. Just after that a person came to me from the quartermaster, desiring to know what o'clock it was by my watch; which, judging to be a civil way of demanding it, I sent it him immediately, desiring the messenger to tell him it was a very good gold watch. When it was delivered to the quartermaster he held it up by the chain, and presently laid it down on the deck, giving it a kick with his foot, saying it was a pretty football. On which one of the pirates caught it up, saying he would put it in the common chest to be sold at the mast.

By this time I was loudly called upon to go on board the pirate ship, and there was taken to the commander, who asked me several questions about my ship, saying she would make a fine pirate man-of-war.

As soon as I had done answering the captain's questions, a tall man, with four pistols in his girdle and a broadsword in his hand, came to me on the quarter-deck, telling me his name was James Griffin, and we had been schoolfellows. Though I remembered him very well, yet having formerly heard it had proved fatal to some who had been taken by pirates to own any knowledge of them, I told him I could not remember any such person by name. On that he mentioned some boyish pranks that had formerly passed between us. But I, still denying any knowledge of him, he told me that he supposed I took him to be one of the pirate's crew because I saw him dressed in that manner, but that he was a forced man, and since he had been taken, though they spared his life, they had