The pirates, amid rude laughter, pushed before Barthelemy a tall, fair man, who, with his hands thrust into his pockets, eyed the new captain scornfully from head to foot.
"Speak fair, noble lord!" said Skyrme, raising his sinewy hand, threateningly above Simpson's head, "or you'll bite your own tongue."
"I should do that without your telling me," replied Simpson, nonchalantly, glancing at his comrades. "You know that my father was Lord Simpson?"
"Of course we do!" shouted the others.
"My father was the sworn foe of Jeffreys, who, after Monmouth's fall, brought the brave English Protestant nobles to the scaffold. My father suffered with them. Since that time I have hated the Papists, and do not want one even for a pirate chief. Not even you, Barthelemy, for you are a Papist."
Instead of breaking the speaker's head, Skyrme raised him on his arm and, amid the loud laughter of the pirates, drew him toward Barthelemy, with whom he drained the cup of friendship, after Barthelemy had assured him, on his honor as a pirate, that he had not entered a church since his christening, and had never been in a priest's presence during his entire life. The new captain was then formally given the leader's cap with its scarlet plume, and the whole band then proceeded to the work of distributing the booty.
Barthelemy sat on a cask turned upside down, holding on his knees a black book in which were written in red letters the names of the pirates, and read them one by one in a loud tone. Often nobody answered and, at the end of a long pause, some one growled: "Dead," and the name was instantly erased from the list.
Just then a pirate brought Captain Rolls, who had been bound hand and foot, to the mainmast, where he laid him flat on the deck. Barthelemy raised his hat with the utmost courtesy.
"Pardon me, captain, that my men have placed you in so uncomfortable a position. You are a brave soldier and fought well. Unbind this worthy man."
"His hands too?" asked a pirate, casting a doubtful glance at his leader from under his shaggy brows.