Peter Blood looked round the scarlet-hung court.
For an instant that foam of white faces seemed to heave before him.

Then he was himself again, and a voice was asking him what he had to say for himself, why sentence of death should not be passed upon him, being convicted of high treason.
He laughed, and his laugh jarred uncannily upon the deathly stillness of the court.

It was all so grotesque, such a mockery of justice administered by that wistful-eyed jack-pudding in scarlet, who was himself a mockery--the venal instrument of a brutally spiteful and vindictive king.

His laughter shocked the austerity of that same jack-pudding.
"Do you laugh, sirrah, with the rope about your neck, upon the very threshold of that eternity you are so suddenly to enter into ?" And then Blood took his revenge.
"Faith, it's in better case I am for mirth than your lordship.

For I have this to say before you deliver judgment.