quat in a circle, which they meekly did.
He was in one of his fiendishly mirthful humors, rumpling his beard,
strutting to and fro, laughing in senseless outbursts. At such times his
men were most fearful for their lives. What sort of an infernal pastime
he had now concocted was beyond the imagination of the lads who were
concealed a dozen yards away. He was not hunting them, this much was
plain, and it seemed wise to be quiet and avoid drawing attention to
themselves.

They saw Blackbeard ignite a torch at the lantern and poke it into one
pot after another. Flames began to burn, blue and green and yellow, and
lurid smoke rolled to the deck-beams overhead. Amid this glare and reek
of combustibles, Blackbeard waved his torch and tremendously proclaimed:

"Come, lads, we be all devils together, with a hell of our
own,--brimstone fires and pitch. Now, braggarts, see how long ye can
bear it. 'Tis a foretaste of what's in store for all hands. At this game
I'll outlast ye, for, harkee, I sold my soul to the Old Scratch as is
well known."

[Illustration: HE LOOMED LIKE THE BELIAL WHOM HE WAS SO FOND OF CLAIMING
AS HIS MENTOR]

He stirred his infernal pots and the greasy smoke rolled upward in
choking volume. The brimstone fumes were so vile and noxious that the
victims of this outlandish revel soon gasped and wheezed. But they dared
not object nor move from their places among the villainous pots.
Blackbeard enjoyed their sufferings, taunting them as milksops and
poltroons who could not endure even this taste of Gehenna. He himself
appeared to be unaffected by it, lurching from one man to another,
whacking them with the burning torch or playfully upsetting them. In the
gaseous pall of smoke he loomed like the Belial whom he was so fond of
claiming as his mentor.

Finally one of his involuntary guests toppled over in a faint.
Blackbeard was kind enough to haul him to the door and boot him through
it. A second man dragged himself thither. A third found voice to
supplicate. The witch-fires still smoked and stewed in the pots and
Blackbeard had proved that he was the toughest demon of them all.

The two stowaways watched this demented exploit in sheer wonderment. The
fumes were not dense in their part of the hold and they could breathe,
but they well-nigh strangled in trying to refrain from coughing. The
fires of tar and brimstone and what not cast so much light that they
dared not betray themselves by crawling toward the fo