The captive sailors were released, and told to dress all the hens, ducks, and geese that were in the coops on deck; but no sooner were the heads chopped off than these childish blackguards refused to have supper delayed. The Bird carried a huge furnace, or oven, contrived for cooking the food of the five hundred slaves which were expected aboard. Into a roaring fire the pirates flung the hens, ducks, and geese, feathers and all, and hauled them out as soon as they were singed and scorched. The same culinary method was employed for half a dozen Westphalia hams and a sow with a dozen little pigs. A few finicky pirates commanded the ship’s cook, under pain of death, to boil the meat in the great copper caldrons designed for the slaves’ porridge.
The prodigious banquet made these unmannerly guests feel in better humor, and they even told their surgeon to dress the wounds of the Bird’s sailors. They amused themselves by playing foot-ball with Captain Snelgrave’s excellent gold watch, and drank themselves into a state of boisterous joviality. The old record puts it mildly, to say the least, in affirming that “the captain’s situation was by no means an agreeable one, even under these circumstances, as ferocious men are generally capricious. He now fared very hard, enduring great fatigue with patience, and submitting resignedly to the Almighty will.”
Before the wild night ended he was taken aboard the pirates’ flagship, where he was questioned by a sort of commodore or commander-in-chief of the squadron. His name was Cocklyn, and he had ambitions to conduct operations on a scale even larger. He wanted to win over the Bird’s crew and to fly his black pennant from her, as his talk disclosed, and this was why the lives of her company had been spared. Now occurred one of those romantic incidents which the novelist would hesitate to invent as stretching the probabilities, but in these ancient narratives of the sea things were set down as they actually happened. This is how the story was written in 1724:
Soon after the captain was on board the pirate ship, a tall man, well armed, came up to him and told him his name was Jack Griffin, one of his old school-fellows. Upon Captain Snelgrave appearing not to recollect him, he mentioned many pranks of their youth together. He said he was forced into the pirate service while chief mate of a British vessel and was later compelled to act as master of one of the pirate ships. His crew he described as most atrocious miscreants. This Jack Griffin, a bold and ready man, promised to watch over the captain’s safety, as the pirates would soon be worse intoxicated with the liquors on board their prize.
Griffin now obtained a bowl of punch and led the way to the cabin, where a carpet was spread to sit upon, as the pirate ship was always kept clear for action. They sat down cross-legged, and Cocklyn, the chief captain, drank Snelgrave’s health, saying his crew had spoken well of him. A hammock was slung for Captain Snelgrave at night, by the intercession of Griffin, but the pirates lay rough, as they styled it, because their vessel, as already observed, was always cleared for action.
Griffin, true to his promise of guarding his old school-fellow while asleep, kept near the captain’s hammock, sword in hand, to protect him from insults. Towards morning, while the pirates were carousing on deck, the boatswain came toward the hammock in a state of intoxication, swearing that he would slice the captain for ordering the crew to fire, dragged him from his hammock, and would, no doubt, have executed his savage threat if it had not been for Griffin who, as the boatswain pressed forward to stab the sleeping Captain Snelgrave, cut at the fellow with his sword and after a sharp struggle succeeded in beating him off. At length the wretches fell asleep and the captain was no longer molested. Griffin next day complained of the boatswain’s conduct and he was threatened with a whipping. However, Captain Snelgrave wisely pleaded for him, by saying he was in liquor.
Shielded from harm by this lawless, but devoted, old school-mate of his, the master of the Bird galley was in no great danger of being sliced by some impulsive pirate who was careless with a cutlass. His perfidious first mate and ten of the sailors now signed on as pirates and assisted the others in ransacking Captain Snelgrave’s unfortunate ship. Such merchandise as did not happen to please their fancy was pitched overboard, and they saved little more than the provisions, the clothing, and the gold coin. They were like a gang of hoodlums on a lark, and wanton destruction was their very stupid idea of a pastime. This wild carnival went on for several days. Barrels of claret and brandy were hoisted on deck, the heads knocked in, and the drink baled out with cans and buckets until the roisterers could hold not another swallow. Then they doused one another with buckets of claret and good French brandy as they ran roaring around the deck.
Bottled liquors were opened by whacking off the necks with cutlasses. They pelted one another with cheeses, and emptied the tubs of butter to slide in. One of these sportive pirates dressed himself in the captain’s shore-going black suit and his best hat and wig, strutted among his comrades until they drenched him with claret, and then chucked the wardrobe overboard. You will be gratified to learn that “this man, named Kennedy, ended his career in Execution Dock.”
Of the two other pirate ships then in the river of Sierra Leone one was British and the other French. The English commander was one of the brave and resourceful sea-rogues of his era, a fighting seaman in whom survived the spirit of those desperate adventurers of the seventeenth century who followed Morgan to Panama and hunted the stately Spanish galleons with Hawkins and Dampier in the waters of the Pacific. This was the famous Captain Davis, who would sooner storm a fort or take a town at the head of a landing party than to loot a helpless merchantman. He had attempted to combine forces with these other pirates at Sierra Leone and had been formally elected admiral in a council of war. But he found reason to suspect the good faith of his associates, whereupon he summoned them into his cabin and told them to their faces:
“Hear ye, you Cocklyn and La Boise” (the French captain), I find that by strengthening you I have put a rod into your hands to whip myself, but I am able to deal with you both. However, since we met in love let us part in love, for I find that three of a trade can never agree long together.