ighty glad when
the cauldron is empty and that part of the performance ended. Then the
bones being swept from the table, a huge skin of wine is set before Don
Lopez, and he serves us each with about a quart in an odd-shaped vessel
with a spout, which Don Sanchez and his countrymen use by holding it
above their heads and letting the wine spurt into their mouths; but we,
being unused to this fashion, preferred rather to suck it out of the
spout, which seemed to them as odd a mode as theirs was to us. However,
better wine, drink it how you may, there is none than the wine of these
parts, and this reconciling us considerably to our condition, we
listened with content to their singing of ditties, which they did very
well for such rude fellows, to the music of a guitar and a tambourine.
And so when our pots came to be replenished a second time, we were all
mighty merry and agreeable save Jack Dawson, who never could take his
liquor like any other man, but must fall into some extravagant humour,
and he, I perceived, regarded some of the company with a very sour,
jealous eye because, being warmed with drink, they fell to casting
glances at Moll with a certain degree of familiarity. Especially there
was one fellow with a hook nose, who stirred his bile exceedingly,
sitting with his elbows on the table and his jaws in his hands, and
would scarcely shift his eyes from Moll. And since he could not make his
displeasure understood in words, and so give vent to it and be done,
Jack sat there in sullen silence watching for an opportunity to show his
resentment in some other fashion. The other saw this well enough, but
would not desist, and so these two sat fronting each other like two dogs
ready to fly at each other's throats. At length, the hook-nosed rascal,
growing bolder with his liquor, rises as if to reach for his wine pot,
and stretching across the table, chucks Moll under the chin with his
grimy fingers. At this Jack flinging out his great fist with all the
force of contained passion, catches the other right in the middle of the
face, with such effect that the fellow flies clean back over his bench,
his head striking the pavement with a crash. Then, in an instant, all
his fellows spring to their feet, and a dozen long knives flash out from
their sheaths.

CHAPTER IX.

_Of the manner in which we escaped pretty fairly out of the hands of
Senor Don Lopez and his brigands._

Up starts Jack Dawson, catching Moll by the