Many had therefore brought canteens of water, assorted items of food to keep hunger at bay and even the odd tot of rum. One group of half-a-dozen tars, who established a little camp in front of the covered enclosure, had arrived with a regular feast of ship’s provisions, freshly bought produce and even two wooden casks containing small beer, or watered-down ale, which was traditionally drunk as a means of making water palatable and less risky to one’s health. One of the casks was soon drunk dry. The other, however, rolled under the first row of seats in the pavilion. What with all the people milling around, it would have taken a very sharp eye indeed to see the black line of gunpowder that ran from the open bunghole at the top of the cask just a few feet to where the tars were standing, eating, drinking and even smoking pipes of tobacco as they followed the proceedings on the auction block. But one of the sailors was not watching the block at all. He had his eye on the prince’s enclosure.
