After the fashion of the trade, the pirate crew were working on the share basis; that is, after deducting for general expenses, a major part went to Quelch—and of course Holding—and minor parts of the plunder were distributed head for head. All cash taken was put in the keeping of the quartermaster to accumulate for future division; merchandise such as sugar and so on was probably marketed at way ports and the proceeds put into the treasury, after the manner again of Kidd in the East Indies.
Cuffee, the flunky, not being divisible, was auctioned off at the mast to the highest bidder, who happened to be one Ben Perkins. The price was thrown into the common pot. Cuffee’s sale brought a hundred dollars to the cash account.
II
An uneventful run of ten degrees brought the Charles and her tender to the twenty-third degree of latitude and the Christmas season of the year. Pretty far south they were by this time. Another of those innumerable little Portuguese brigs here fell into their maw. Although only twenty-five tons burden, her cargo was worth a couple of hundred pounds.
They were off Grande Island at the time, and beating along close to the shore. Rounding the headland, they saw the settlement of Grande Island before them, with a brig or two at anchor in the bay. Upon this Quelch left his flagship and went over to the tender and imprudently struck off for one of these moored brigs.
As the tender got closer, those aboard saw a boat put hurriedly off from the Portuguese brig and make for the town. Apparently the natives had suspected the oncoming tender as promising them no good fortune. Quelch and his men must have grinned at this easy capture, and doubtless wondered why the deserting crew did not scuttle their ship rather than leave her to fall into the hands of this unknown enemy.
Quelch was drawing nigh to his prey when to his surprise a large, red, stolid face rose, like an early sun, above the bulwarks. One man had evidently remained as a reception committee, and he certainly not a Portuguese.
He claimed to be a Dutchman when the pirates had flocked over the side of his ship and clustered about him, brilliant with their new silk breeches and formidable with an assortment of cutlasses and pistols.
This unconcerned Dutchman seems to have been far from temperamental, and entirely unacquainted with nervousness. He casually spat over the side and asked who they were that thus jumped a fellow’s ship. He had no trouble finding folk among the pirates who could palaver enough Dutch to get along with. He added that there was a pretty good gain in the ship,—sugar to the value of one hundred and fifty pounds and gold and silver and Portuguese coins worth about fifty more. It was not his property.
He lolled against the mast, watching with dull eye the transfer of the sugar from the Portuguese to the Charles, drawn in closer for that purpose. He noted without a flicker of expression the fine silk breeches of these sailors, and gazed ponderingly down at his own garments of canvas. Silk breeches, eh? He strolled slowly up and down the deck in the hard labor of reflection.