' The
punch-bowls were produced, liquor was given to the sailors, while the
officers of the 'Worcester' drank with the visitors in the cabin.
Mackenzie was supposed to be a lord. All was festivity, 'a most
compleat scene of a comedy, acted to the life,' when, as a Scottish
song was being sung, each officer of the 'Worcester' found a pistol at
his ear. The carpenter and some of the crew rushed at the loaded
blunderbusses that hung in the cabin; but there were shining swords
between them and the blunderbusses. By nine at night, on August 12,
Mackenzie's followers were masters of the English ship, and the
hatches, gunroom, chests, and cabinets were sealed with the official
seal of the Scottish African and East India Company. In a day or two
the vessel lay without rudder or sails, in Bruntisland Harbour, 'as
secure as a thief in a mill.' Mackenzie landed eight of the ship's
guns and placed them in an old fort commanding the harbour entry,
manned them with gunners, and all this while an English man-of-war lay
in the Firth!
For a peaceful secretary of a commercial company, with a scratch
eleven picked up in the street on a Saturday afternoon, to capture a
vessel with a crew of twenty-four, well accustomed to desperate deeds,
was 'a sufficient camisado or onfall.
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