"Old man's down."
Dizzily he saw the old Commander sprawling to a fall, a man on top of him. The boy heard him grunt as he fell. That grunt angered him.
"I'm coming, sir!" he cried, and ran wrathfully with bloody dirk. "Beast!" he yelled. "Leave him alone!"
There was no need for him to cry.
The old man had done his own work from underneath with the jack-knife. Out poked his badger-grey head from under his man, much as the boy had often seen a ferret from beneath the body of a disembowelled rabbit.
"So fur so good," grunted the old man, crawling out on hands and knees, the scent-bottle between his teeth. "How's things forrad?"
Forward the deck was all but clear.
The remnant of the boarders, jammed up in the bows, were being hammered to death. A last fellow in a red night-cap, swarming out on the bowsprit, plumped into the sea.
The Gunner leapt on to the bulwark.
"Cleared, be God! alow and aloft!" he roared, swinging his chain-shot about his head. "Ats off all!—