“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: “I cannot tell what awaits us, but it appears to me that the worst is to come.” This is how Captain Lincoln quoted it in his diary, but the mate of the schooner, sorely tried as he must have been, was more likely to exclaim: “I can’t fathom all their ---- ---- tricks, but it looks to me as if the bloody rogues had made up their minds to scupper us, and may they sizzle in hell for a million years!” The pirate chief and his officers held a whispered conference and then spent the last night ashore in gambling, the diminutive leader “in hopes of getting back some of the five hundred dollars he had lost a few nights before; which made him unusually fractious.” Before they were marooned, Captain Lincoln took pains to note down that the pirates were sporting new canvas trousers made from the light sails of the _Exertion_ and that they had cut up the colors to make fancy belts to keep their money in, and he added this vivid little touch to the portrait of the chief, “The captain had on one of my best shirts, a cleaner one than I had ever seen him wear before.” At sunset the crew of the _Exertion_, with several prisoners taken out of a Spanish merchant prize, were put into a boat. At this lamentable moment, Nikola stepped to the front again and said to Captain Lincoln: