"Come, lads, we be all devils together, with a hell of our own,—brimstone fires and pitch. Now, braggarts, see how long ye can bear it. 'Tis a foretaste of what's in store for all hands. At this game I'll outlast ye, for, harkee, I sold my soul to the Old Scratch as is well known."
HE LOOMED LIKE THE BELIAL WHOM HE WAS SO FOND OF CLAIMING AS HIS MENTOR
He stirred his infernal pots and the greasy smoke rolled upward in choking volume. The brimstone fumes were so vile and noxious that the victims of this outlandish revel soon gasped and wheezed. But they dared not object nor move from their places among the villainous pots. Blackbeard enjoyed their sufferings, taunting them as milksops and poltroons who could not endure even this taste of Gehenna. He himself appeared to be unaffected by it, lurching from one man to another, whacking them with the burning torch or playfully upsetting them. In the gaseous pall of smoke he loomed like the Belial whom he was so fond of claiming as his mentor.
Finally one of his involuntary guests toppled over in a faint. Blackbeard was kind enough to haul him to the door and boot him through it. A second man dragged himself thither. A third found voice to supplicate. The witch-fires still smoked and stewed in the pots and Blackbeard had proved that he was the toughest demon of them all.
The two stowaways watched this demented exploit in sheer wonderment. The fumes were not dense in their part of the hold and they could breathe, but they well-nigh strangled in trying to refrain from coughing. The fires of tar and brimstone and what not cast so much light that they dared not betray themselves by crawling toward the forepeak. The upright beams between the keelson and the deck threw black shadows over them and they were in no great peril of detection so long as they stayed motionless.
Joe Hawkridge had heard gossip of this extraordinary amusement as a kind of initiation for hands newly joining Blackbeard's ship. He therefore read it that these unfortunates were some of Stede Bonnet's men who had been captured with the brig. They had been allowed to enlist and were being taught to respect their new master.
Jack Cockrell had hugely admired young Joe for his ready wit and coolness in other crises of their mutual fortunes but now came a moment in which the astute sea urchin surpassed himself. It was not too much to say that he displayed absolute genius with the sturdy Master Cockrell to aid and abet him. Joe clawed in the dark until he found the sack with a few pounds of wheat flour in it. A quick whisper and his comrade grasped the great idea. They took no thought of a sequel. They would trust to opportunity. Hastily they rubbed the flour into their shirts and breeches. They covered their faces with it and lavishly sprinkled their hair. They looked at each other in the shadow of the beams and were pleased with their handiwork.
Another whispered consultation and Joe possessed himself of the cannon-ball of a cheese while Jack grasped the side of salt-fish by the tail. They resembled two whitened clowns of a pantomime but in spirit they were as grimly serious as the menace of death could make them.
Blackbeard was dancing clumsily, like a drunken bear, and deriding with lewd oaths the two or three tortured survivors of his brimstone carnival. In a high, wailing voice which rose to a shriek there was borne to him the words: