Little by little the _Tiger_ pulled up to windward of the buccaneer and
the men below in the gun deck could be heard cheering as their advance
brought the black sloop more and more nearly opposite the yawning mouths
of the _Tiger's_ port carronades.
The shore was now less than half a mile distant. Though making all
possible speed, the pirate schooner seemed to rise on the waves with a
more sluggish heave than before. Job, watching her through the spyglass,
turned to Isaiah Hawkes.
"Don't she look sort o' soggy to you?" he asked. "I can't quite make out
whether that's a hole in her planking or--by the Great Hook Block! See
there, now, when she lifts! One of our shots landed smack on her
waterline. No wonder they're trying to beach her!"
A moment later the _Tiger_ had hauled fairly abreast and the two
schooners plunged along a bare hundred yards apart. Not a head showed
above the high weather bulwark of the _Revenge_. Only the muzzles of her
guns peered grimly from their ports in her black side. There was
something sinister about this apparently deserted ship, lurching
drunkenly shoreward, with her torn sails and broken rigging flapping in
the breeze, and the pirate flag flying at her peak.
Job made a megaphone of his hands and raised his voice in a hail.
"Ahoy, _Revenge_!" he boomed. "Will you surrender peacefully, and haul
down that flag?"
There was silence for a full ten seconds. Then a musket cracked and a
bullet imbedded itself in the mainmast by Job's head.
"All right, boys," he said, without moving, "let 'em have it! Ready,
port battery? Fire!" Jeremy and Bob, clinging side by side to the
hatch-combing, felt the planking quiver under them at the series of
mighty discharges, and saw the pirate schooner check and stagger like an
animal that has received its death wound.
Only one of her guns was able to reply, the round-shot screaming high and
wide. But on she went, and the steep beach below the dunes was very
close now.
Captain Job stood by the hatchway. "All hands up, ready to board her,"
he ordered, and the crew, swarming on deck, ran to their places by the
longboat amidships.
The _Tiger_ was now in very shallow water, but Job waited till he saw
the other craft strike. Then, "Bring her head to the wind, Hawkes!" he
cried, "And over with the boat, lads! Lively now, or they'll get
ashore!"
Hardly was the order given when the boat shot into the water. During the
scramble of the seamen for places on her thwarts, Jeremy and Bob jumped
down and crouched in the bows, unseen by any but those nearest them. Ten
seconds after she hit the waves the boat was filled from gunwale to
gunwale with sailors, armed to the teeth with pistols, cutlasses and
boarding-pikes. Job, last to leave the deck, spoke a word to Hawkes, who
remained in command, and jumped into the sternsheets.
"Now, give way!" he roared.
The eight stout oars lashed through the water and the boat sped
shoreward like an arrow. Up in the bows the two boys clutched their
weapons and waited. Neither one would have admitted that he was scared,
though they were both shivering with something more than the cold.
Besides his precious pistol, Bob was gripping the hilt of a
murderous-looking hanger, which he had picked up from the pile on deck
in passing. Jeremy had been able to secure no weapon but a short pike
with a heavy ashen staff and a knife-like blade at the upper end. They
peered over the bows in silence. The longboat was close to the
_Revenge's_ quarter now, but there was no sign of the pirates along her
rail.
"Suppose they've got ashore?" asked Bob. "I don't see--"
"Down heads all!"
It was Job's voice, and the boys together with many of the seamen ducked
instinctively at the words. As they did so there came a crash of
musketry, followed by intermittent shots, and splinters flew from the
gunwale of the boat. Jeremy heard a gasping cry behind him and a young
sailor toppled backward from the thwart. He fell between the boys, and
as they raised him in their arms he died.
Another seaman had been killed and three more wounded by the pirate
volley, which had been fired from a distance of barely a dozen yards.
Seeing the effect of their fusillade, the buccaneers rose cheering and
yelling from behind the bulwarks of the sloop in the evident belief that
they had succeeded in demoralizing the attacking force. But the speed of
the boat had hardly been checked. In another instant the rowers shipped
their oars and the gunwale scraped along the free-board of the schooner.
"A guinea to the first man up!" cried Job, himself reaching up with
powerful fingers for a grip by which to climb.
There were no rope-ends hanging, and as the _Revenge_ in her stranded
position lay much higher forward than aft, the boys, standing in the
bows, found themselves faced by smooth planking too high to scale.
Jeremy started back over the thwarts, but heard Bob calling to him and
turned.
"Here's a place to board!" the Delaware boy was saying, and pointed
toward the forward gun-port which stood open just beyond and above the
bow of the longboat. In a twinkling Bob had straddled through the hole,
with Jeremy close after him. It was dark in the 'tween-decks and the two
boys made their way forward on tiptoe, waiting breathlessly for the
attack they felt sure would come. But apparently all the buccaneers were
busy above in the fierce fight that they could hear raging along the
rail. They moved on, undeterred, till they reached the foot of the
fo'c's'le ladder, where Jeremy feeling along the bulkhead, uttered an
exclamation.
"This is their gun-rack," he said. "And here's a musket all loaded and
primed! I'll take it along!"
The hatch cover had been drawn to, but Bob, trying it from beneath,
decided it was not fastened. Both boys tugged at it and succeeded in
sliding it back an inch or two, where it stuck.
The hubbub on deck was now terrific. They could hear, above the general
outcry, an occasional sharply gasped command in Job's voice, or a
snarling oath from one of the buccaneers, but for the most part it was a
bedlam of unintelligible shouts with a constant undertone of ringing
steel and the thud of shifting feet. Most of the firearms, apparently,
had been discharged, and in the mêlée no one had time to reload.
Bob, straining desperately at the hatch-cover, spied Jeremy's
pike-shaft, and thrusting it through the narrow opening, pried with all
his strength. The hatch squeaked open reluctantly and the boys squirmed
through on to the deck.
They gasped at the sight which met their eyes as they emerged. Both of
them had confidently expected to find the pirates already beaten, and
fighting with their backs to the wall. But such was far from being the
case.
On the deck amidships lay two men from the _Tiger_, sorely wounded,
while Job and two others stood at bay above them, swinging cutlasses
mightily, and beating off, time after time, the attacks of a dozen
fierce pirate hanger-men. A number of buccaneers had fallen but all who
were unwounded were raging like a pack of dogs about the figures of Job
and his two supporters.
"They can't get up!" cried Bob, "The men can't climb the side! Here,
help me bring that rope!" It was a matter of seconds only before the
boys had dashed across the deck and thrown a rope's end to the men below
in the longboat. Then Jeremy turned and ran toward the waist. Another
man was down now. Job and a single comrade were fighting back to back,
parrying with red blades the blows of half a score of the enemy. Jeremy
saw a gleam of yellow teeth between wicked lips, and a flash of light
eyes in the thick of the assault. Then for a moment he had a glimpse of
the whole face of Pharaoh Daggs, scarred and distorted with frightful
passion--a cruel wolf's face--and even as he looked, the dripping
sword-blade of the man with the broken nose plunged between the ribs of
Job's last henchman. The wounded seaman staggered, leaning his weight
against his captain, but still kept his guard up, defending himself
feebly. Job hooked his left arm about the poor lad's body and backed
with his burden toward the mainmast, slashing fiercely around him with
his tireless right arm the while. When they reached the mast, Job leaned
his comrade against it, set his own back to the wood, and battled on.
But now a cheer resounded, and the buccaneers, turning their heads,
found themselves face to face with the rush of half a dozen men from the
_Tiger_, while more could be seen swarming over the rail.
The knot of pirates broke to meet the attack, but some of them stayed.
Daggs and three others, including the huge mulatto mate, closed in on
Job, cutting at him savagely. The wounded sailor had fainted and slipped
to the deck. Jeremy saw the saddle-colored mate step swiftly to one
side, then come up from behind the mast, drawing a long dirk from his
sash as he neared Job's back. He had lifted the knife and was stepping
in for a blow, when Jeremy pulled the trigger of his musket. There must
have been an extra heavy charge of powder in the gun, for its recoil
threw the boy flat on the deck, and before he could regain his feet he
saw a man close above him and caught the flash of a hanger in the air.
Desperately Jeremy rolled out of the way, and none too soon, for the
blade cut past his head with a nasty _swish_. He scrambled up and caught
a boarding-pike from the deck as he did so. The pirate followed, hacking
at him with his cutlass, and for seconds that seemed like hours the boy
fought for his life, parrying one stroke after another, till the pike
shaft was broken by the blows, and he was left weaponless. As he ducked
and turned in despair, a man from the _Tiger_ ran in and caught the
buccaneer on his flank, finishing him in short order.
The deck was now full of struggling groups, for though a score of the
longboat's crew had climbed aboard, the pirates were putting up a fierce
resistance. Jeremy, panting from his encounter, cast about for a weapon
and soon found a cutlass, with which he armed himself. He turned toward
the mainmast foot once more, and to his joy discovered that his shot had
taken effect. The mulatto had disappeared under the trampling mass of
fighting men, and Job's tall figure still towered by the mast. It took
the lad only a second, however, to realize that his Captain's plight was
serious. The big Yankee was fighting wearily with a broken cutlass, and
his face was gray beneath the red stream of blood that ran from a wound
above his eye. Jeremy plunged into the ruck of the battle, careless now
of danger. A sort of berserk rage possessed him at the sight of that
wound. He hewed his way frantically toward the mast, and suddenly found
Bob there beside him, cutting and lunging like a demon. He gasped out a
cheer. But even as it left his throat, the Captain's arm flew up
convulsively, then dropped out of sight in the mob.
"Job's down!" cried Bob wildly, but the New England boy's only reply was
a half-choked sob.
Now the tables were turned of a sudden, for three stout sea-dogs from
the _Tiger_, finishing their first opponents, dashed into the fray with
a yell, and Daggs, hewing his way to the mast, turned to face the new
attack with only two men left on foot to back him.
The fight was short and fierce. First one, then the other of the
buccaneers went down before the furious assault of Job's seamen. At
length only the pirate chief was left to battle on, terrible and
silent, his face set in a ghastly grin, like the visage of a lone wolf
fighting his last fight.
But the odds were too great. The men of the _Tiger_ pressed in
relentlessly till at last a dozen sword-points found their mark at once.
And so died Pharaoh Daggs, violently, as he had lived.