"I supposed these were to follow!" said the doctor with a fiendish laugh.
Meanwhile the pirates began to pluck the poultry, and then cut the fowl up clumsily, lacking the help of Scudamore, who swore by all the imps of Satan that he didn't enlist to kill animals, but men.
The beautiful pheasants were flung into three large copper kettles, white pepper and cod-fish were added, and fires were lighted under the caldrons.
"Oh, what barbarians!" sighed the English captain, "To cook cod-fish with pheasants."
As soon as the meat was half done they gathered around, flourishing their knives. The captain was invited to take his seat among them and share the meal, which he eagerly did, for on discovering that the birds could no longer be saved, he developed a laudable intention of devouring enough of them for three men.
After the repast the wretches brought out the captain's preserved fruit, stored carefully away for his own use, and ate it before his eyes.
The rude fellows, accustomed to coarse smoked meat, greedily swallowed the expensive pistachio nuts and preserved pineapples, while saying contemptuously that they would much rather have onions.
And how they drank the noble wine! From the narrow-necked bottles in which it is usually sold! No, they knocked out the bottoms of the casks and dipped it up with their hats, or held their mouths under the cock and drank till they could scarcely rise. Swiftly as the wine poured into their throats, songs and laughter poured out, the wildest shouts of revelry which buccaneers ever uttered; even the English captain was obliged to drink his own wine, and the more he swallowed, the more firmly he began to believe that he himself was the pirate chief who had captured and plundered a ship, and advised the men to hang each other, being affected in precisely the opposite manner from Scudamore, who, under the influence of the wine, believed himself an honest man who had been taken prisoner by bandits; the result of which was that the two men had a violent scuffle, and as the captain proved to be the stronger, Scudamore lost two of his teeth.
The former then triumphantly resumed his seat among the pirates, and by singing several songs aloud, roused their enthusiasm to such a pitch that Skyrme, starting up, vowed by a sea of wine to drink the Bristol captain's health in a glass which no man had ever used.
He kept his word, for, ordering a cask filled with Malvoisie to be rolled up, he knocked out the head, sprang into it, and there drank the health of the captain, who almost died with laughter, thinking it vastly entertaining that a man should sit in the vessel from which he drank without being afraid of swallowing himself.