Day after day the wind filled our sails and sang in the rigging, and day after day we sailed through blue seas toward the magic of the south. Day after day a listless and voluptuous world seemed too idle for any dream of wrong, and day after day we whom a strange turn of Fortune's wheel had placed upon a pirate ship held our lives in our hands, and walked so close with Death that at length that very intimacy did breed contempt. It was not a time to think; it was a time to act, to laugh and make others laugh, to bluster and brag, to estrange sword and scabbard, to play one's hand with a fine unconcern, but all the time to watch, watch, watch, day in and day out, every minute of every hour. That ship became a stage, and we, the actors, should have been applauded to the echo. How well we played let witness the fact that the ship came to the Indies, with me for captain and the minister for mate, and with the woman that was on board unharmed; nay, reverenced like a queen. The great cabin was hers, and the poop deck; we made for her a fantastic state with doffing of hats and bowings and backward steps. We were her guard,--the gentlemen of the Queen,--I and my Lord Carnal, the minister and Diccon, and we kept between her and the rest of the ship.
We did our best, and our best was very much. When I think of the songs the minister sang; of the roars of laughter that went up from the lounging pirates when, sitting astride one of the main-deck guns, he made his voice call to them, now from the hold, now from the stern gallery, now from the masthead, now from the gilt sea maid upon the prow, I laugh too. Sometimes a space was cleared for him, and he played to them as to the pit at Blackfriars. They laughed and wept and swore with delight,--all save the Spaniard, who was ever like a thundercloud, and Paradise, who only smiled like some languid, side-box lord. There was wine on board, and during the long, idle days, when the wind droned in the rigging like a bagpipe, and there was never a cloud in the sky, and the galleons were still far away, the pirates gambled and drank. Diccon diced with them, and taught them all the oaths of a free company. So much wine, and no more, should they have; when they frowned, I let them see that their frowning and their half-drawn knives mattered no doit to me. It was their whim--a huge jest of which they could never have enough--still to make believe that they sailed under Kirby. Lest it should spoil the jest, and while the jest outranked all other entertainment, they obeyed as though I had been indeed that fierce sea wolf.