OVER THE SIDE
With a fearful grinding of timbers and rattling of spars, the
merchantman's larboard bow scraped along the enemy's side.
Boarding-irons were thrown across from the forecastle-deck. With a yell,
the men of Devon sprang from rail to rail, and hurled themselves upon
the mongrels who clustered to repulse them. Cutlasses skirred in the
air; and some struck clanging metal, and some met with a softer
resistance. Screams of rage and pain, and shouts of grim exultation,
rang above the conflict.
Old Trowley hacked a place for himself in the thickest of the press, and
laid about him with such desperate fury and such fearful oaths that the
buccaneers hustled each other to get out of his way.
Kingswell, in the waist of the _Cristobal_, encountered D'Antons, and
claimed him for his own. As their blades rasped together, D'Antons began
the story of Sir Ralph Westleigh's death in the wilderness. Kingswell
heard it without comment. The tumult about them gradually subsided, as
man after man of the pirate crew was cut down or bound. Sail was
shortened on both vessels, and the victors, sound and wounded alike,
gathered about the two swordsmen. A strained silence took possession of
the watchers. The rough fellows understood that their captain had an old
score to settle with the buccaneer. They were fascinated by the
lightning play of the rapiers. They noted every movement of foot and
hand, blade and eye. When D'Antons snarled an insulting taunt at his
adversary, they cursed softly. When their captain pricked the pirate's
shoulder, a husky murmur of admiration went through them. So intent were
they on the fight that they failed to notice the approach of Miwandi,
the Beothic woman, until she was in their midst. But they became aware
of her presence when she screamed with rage and flung herself upon
Kingswell.
"Pull the wench off," they cried, and made a futile grab at the mad
figure.
Kingswell, quick as a cat for all his Saxon colouring, wrenched himself
clear of her, avoided the slash of her knife by a half-inch, and lunged
through D'Antons' guard. The buccaneer pitched forward so suddenly and
heavily that the rapier was wrenched from the Englishman's hand. The
hilt struck the deck. The slim blade darted out between D'Antons'
shoulders a full two-thirds of its length. He sprawled on his face,
gulping his last breath; and the hilt of Kingswell's weapon knocked
spasmodically on the red planking of the deck. The woman, stunned with
grief, was led away by two of the seamen.
By the time the duel was over, the long, northern twilight was drawing
to a close. The decks of the _Cristobal_ were cleared of the dead bodies
and the wreckage of guns and spars. The torn rigging was partially
repaired; a few sails were set; and the shattered tiller was replaced.
The prisoners (wounded and bound together, they did not number a dozen)
were divided between the ships. A prize-crew of seven, under the first
mate's command, went aboard the _Cristobal_. Then the boarding-irons
were cast loose, and the vessels fell away from each other to a safe
distance.
Miwandi's grief was desperate. Beatrix strove to comfort her, but failed
signally. Her position was evident enough to every one who had seen her
frantic attempt to assist D'Antons in the encounter with Kingswell.
Beatrix guessed the story. Her face burned at remembrance of her
one-time companionship with D'Antons--of the days before she fully knew
his nature, and often sat at cards and chess with him in the little
cabin in the wilderness--and of the days before that, when he was one of
her admirers in London. Even now she did not know him for her father's
murderer. Kingswell had decided to keep that to himself, until some day
in the happy future, when the wilderness should be fainter than the
memory of a dream in his wife's mind.
For three days the ships kept within sight of each other. On the fourth,
a gale of wind drove them apart; but Kingswell felt no anxiety for the
prize, for she had received no serious damage to her hull in the bitter
encounter that had befallen on his wedding-day.
Aboard the _Heart of the West_ the wounded improved daily; the prisoners
cursed their irons and their luck; the crew never pulled on a rope
without a song to lighten the task; old Trowley, promoted from
imprisonment to the position of second mate, worked like a Trojan, and
Beatrix and Bernard sped the hours in the high and golden atmosphere of
love and youth. The Beothic woman, however, felt no response in her
heart to the stir and happiness about her. Her world had fallen in a
desolation of emptiness, and her very soul was weary of the sequence of
day and night, night and day. She would not eat. She sobbed quietly,
without rest, in her darkened berth. Her ears were deaf to words of
comfort, even when they were spoken in her own language by Ouenwa. She
asked no questions. Ever since that first outbreak, at sight of her
lover's danger, she accepted the will of her pitiless gods without signs
of either anger or wonder.
One still night, when the waves rocked under the faint light of the
stars without any breaking of foam, and the wind was just sufficient to
swell the sails from the yards, the man at the tiller was startled from
his reveries by a splash close alongside. He called to the officer of
the watch, who had heard nothing, and told him of the sound. They
scanned the sea on all sides and listened intently. They saw only the
black, vanishing crests. They heard only the whispering of the ship on
her way.
"A fish," said the mate. The other agreed with him.
In the morning Miwandi's berth was discovered to be empty,--no trace of
her was found alow or aloft.
The remaining days of the passage slipped by without any especial
incident. Winds served. Seas were considerate of the good ship's
safety. No fogs endangered the young lovers' homeward voyage. Every
night there was fiddling in the forecastle and the chanting of rude
ballads. And sometimes in the cabin a violin sang and sang, as if the
very heart of happiness were under the sounding-board, and Love himself
in the strings.