A volley of musket-balls was the reply from the boat, and the first mate of the _Bird_ was told to return the fire. His men stood idle, however, and it transpired that he cherished secret ambitions of being a pirate himself and had won over several of the crew. This was extremely embarrassing for Captain Snelgrave, who was compelled to witness the marauders scramble unresisted up the side of his vessel. The leader of the pirates was in a particularly nasty temper because the mate had been ordered to open fire, and he poked a pistol into the captain’s face and pulled trigger. As quick as he was courageous, the skipper knocked the weapon aside, and was promptly felled with the butt of it. Dodging along the deck, the pirate boatswain swung at him with a broadsword and missed his mark, the blade biting deep into the oaken rail. There was a grain of spunk left in the crew of the _Bird_, and they rushed upon the evil boatswain before he could kill the captain. For this behavior they were mercilessly slashed with cutlasses, kicked and cursed, and then trussed in a row. With a touch of ferocious whimsicality the pirate chief declared that he would let Captain Snelgrave be tried by his own crew. If they had any complaints to make of him as a shipmaster, he would be swung to a yard, and they should haul the rope. He must have been a just and humane man, for not a sailor voiced a grudge, and the ruffians appeared to forget all about murder. After firing volleys to let their ships know that a prize had been captured, they turned with tremendous enthusiasm to the business of guzzling and feasting. 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.”