I have no language to depict the bestiality of that day; and if I had I would think it sin to write of it.  The helm was lashed on the port tack, the haulyards set taut, and all hands down to the lad who was the cook’s scullion proceeded to get drunk.  I took the precaution to have a hanger at my side and to slip one of Cockle’s pistols within the band of my breeches.  I was in an exquisite’ agony of indecision as to what manner to act and how to defend myself from their drunken brutality, for I well knew that if I refused to imbibe with them I should probably be murdered for my abstemiousness; and, if I drank, the stuff was so near to alcohol that I could not hope to keep my senses.  While in this predicament I received a polite invitation to partake in the captain’s company, which I did not see my way clear to refuse, and repaired to the cabin accordingly.

There I found Griggs and Cockle seated, and a fair-sized barrel of rum between them that the captain had just moved thither.  By way of welcome he shot at me a volley of curses and bade me to fill up, and through fear of offending him I took down my first mug with a fair good grace.  Then, in his own particular language, he began the account of the capture of the Jane, taking care in the pauses to see that my mug was full.  But, as luck would have it, he got no farther than the boarding by the Black Moll’s crew, when he fell to squabbling with Cockle as to who had been the first man over the side; and while they were settling this difference I grasped the opportunity to escape.

The maudlin scene that met my eyes on deck defies description; some were fighting, others grinning with a hideous laughter, and still others shouting tavern jokes unspeakable.  And suddenly, whilst I was observing these things from a niche behind the cabin door, I heard the captain cry from within, “The ensign, the ensign!” Forgetting his dispute with Cockle, he bumped past me and made his way with some trouble to the poop.  I climbed the ladder after him, and to my horror beheld him in a drunken frenzy drag a black flag with a rudely painted skull and cross-bones from the signal-chest, and with uncertain fingers toggle it to the ensign haulyards and hoist to the peak, where it fluttered grimly in the light wind like an evil augur on a fair day.  At sight of it the wretches on deck fell to shouting and huzzaing, Griggs standing leering up at it.  Then he gravely pulled off his hat and made it a bow, and turned upon me.

“Salute it, ye lubberly!  Ye are no first-rate here,” he thundered.  “Salute the flag!”

Unless fear had kept me sober, ’tis past my understanding why I was not as drunk as he.  Be that as it may, I was near as quarrelsome, and would as soon have worshipped the golden calf as saluted that rag.  I flung back some reply, and he lugged out and came at me with a spring like a wild beast; and his men below, seeing us fall out, made a rush for the poop with knives and cutlasses drawn.  Betwixt them all I should soon have been in slivers had not the main shrouds offered themselves handy.  And up them I sprung, the captain cutting at my legs as I left the sheer-pole, and I stopped not until I reached the schooner’s cross-trees, where I drew my cutlass.  They pranced around the mast and showered me with oaths, for all the world like a lot of howling dogs which had treed a cat.