The pirate schooner was employed a few days later to fill her hold with cargo from the Exertion and hoist sail for Principe. They lifted the stuff out with a “Yo, ho, ho!” which made Captain Lincoln so unhappy that he pensively wrote:
How different was this sound from what it would have been had I been permitted to pass unmolested by these lawless plunderers and been favored with a safe arrival at the port of my destination where my cargo would have found an excellent sale. Then would the “yo, ho, ho!” on its discharging have been a delightful sound to me.
As a final touch to affect the modern reader with a sense of comedy and the captain with additional woe, the pirates fished out the Exertion’s consignments of furniture and, for lack of space below, sailed off with chairs lashed to the rail in rows and tables hung in the rigging. There now appears the figure of the pirate commander himself, for Bolidar was merely the lieutenant, or executive officer. To Captain Lincoln, gloomily watching the pirate schooner in the offing, with her picturesque garniture of hand-made New England furniture, came Bolidar with five men, his own personal armament consisting of a blunderbuss, cutlass, a long knife, and a pair of pistols. This fearsome lieutenant took Captain Lincoln by the arm, led him aside, and imparted:
“My capitan sends me for your wash.”
Properly resentful, the master of the Exertion replied:
“Damn your eyes! I have no clothes, nor any soap to wash with. You have stolen them all.”
“Ah, ha, but I will have your wash, pronto!” cried Bolidar, waving the blunderbuss. “What you call him that makes tick-tock, same as the clock?”
Disgustedly Captain Lincoln extracted his watch from the place where he had hidden it. The cloud had a silver lining, for Bolidar graciously handed over a small bundle at parting.
It contained a pair of linen drawers sent me by Nikola, also the Rev. Mr. Brooks’ Family Prayer Book. This gave me great satisfaction. Soon after, Bolidar returned with his captain who had one arm slung up, yet with as many implements of war as his diminutive self could conveniently carry. He told me (through an interpreter who was his prisoner) that on his last cruise he had fallen in with two Spanish privateers and beat them off, but had fourteen of his men killed and was himself wounded in the arm. Bolidar turned to me and said, “It is a d—n lie,” which words proved to be correct for his arm was not wounded and when I saw him again he had forgotten to sling it up.
An accurate and convincing portrait, this, and painted with very few strokes—the strutting little braggart of a pirate chief who resorted to such cheap and stagy tricks as bandaging his arm to make an impression! Having disposed of the cargo, it now transpired that the prisoners were to be marooned and left to perish. After all, the traditions of piracy had not been wholly lost and these sordid rascals were running true to form. With an inkling of this fate, Mr. Joshua Brackett, the mate of the Exertion, was heard to say: