Fiction > Book editions > London, 1889 - Master of Ballantrae

tup: MASTEll's WAXDEIUXGS. 55
the nicest sensibility, the scenes that must follow on
our success tempted me ns little as the chances of defeat.
Twice we found women on board ; and though I have
seen towns sacked, and of late days in France some
very horrid public tumults, there was something in
the small ness of the numbers engaged, and the bleak
dangerous sea-surroundings, that made these acts of
piracy far the most revolting. I confess ingenuously
I could never pi'oceed unless I was three parts drunk ;
it was the same even with the crew; Teach himself
was fit for no enterprise till he was full of rum ; and it
was one of the most difficult parts of Ballantrae's per-
formance, to serve us with liquor in the proper quanti-
ties. Even this he did to admiration ; being upon the
whole the most capable man I ever met with, and the
one of the most natural genius. He did not even
scrape favour with the crew, as I did, by continual
buffoonery made upon a very anxious heart; but preserved
on most occasions a great deal of gravity and distance ;
so that he was like a parent among a family of young
children, or a schoolmaster with his boys. What made
his part the harder to perform, the men were most
inveterate grumblers ; Ballantrae's discipline, little as
it was, was yet irksome to their love of licence ; and
what was worse, being kept sober they had time to
think. Some of them accordingly would fall to repent-
ing their abominable crimes ; one in particular, who
was a good Catholic, and with whom I would sometimes