“What?” said Captain Nancy.
“All the best sea fights end with a banquet,” said Captain Flint. “And there’s one waiting in the cabin and nobody but the parrot on guard there. Just let me go below and start the Primus while I get into some dry things, and then there’s nothing to keep us from it.”
Nobody had anything to say against that.
Captain Flint lowered himself through the fore-hatch. A moment later he put his head out.
“By the way,” he said, “I suppose you’ll want to hoist the Jolly Roger on your prize. You’ll find one in the locker.” He bobbed down again, and they heard him bumping about below deck. Peggy opened the locker by the mast, and there, on the top, lay a black flag with a skull and cross bones on it as big as the elephant. She and Titty took the elephant flag off the halyards and fastened on the Black Jack. Then, with a cheer from both ships’ companies, Peggy ran it to the masthead.
Captain Flint’s head bobbed up again through the hatch.
“What about going below?” he said. “You’d better come in by the companionway. And mind your heads, though I suppose none of your heads are in as much danger as mine.”
“Is yours really in danger?” said Titty, looking at it with interest.
“Not for high treason,” said Captain Flint. “Only of being bumped on the way into the cabin.”
Nancy was looking at a large burnt patch on the cabin roof.
“Well,” she said to Captain Flint, “as one pirate to another, I’m sorry it made such a mess. I never would have thought the thing would have burnt both ways. But didn’t it just bang?”