My head struck heavily against the wall as I fell, but I made no outcry.
"Sink me! but the poor lassie thought I meant Mr. Rivers!" I heard the old sailor exclaim as he dropped on his knees beside me,—and the words stayed my failing senses.
"Whom did you mean?" I gasped.
"Young Poole has been done to death, Mistress Margaret. As honest a lad as ever lived, too,—more's the pity!"
I struggled to raise myself, crying: "What do you tell me? Have they killed the lad in pure spite against his master? And where is Mr. Rivers?"
They made me no answer.
"He is dead, then! I knew it, my heart told me so!"
"Eh! poor lass! 'Tis not so bad as that—yet bad enough. They've hung chains enough upon him to anchor a man-o'-war, and moored him fast in the dungeon of the fort. D—n 'em for a crew o' dastard furriners!—an' he own cousin to an English earl!"
"Can you not tell me a straight tale?" I cried. "What has he done to be so ill served? And whose the enmity behind it all,—Melinza's, or the Governor's?"
"Lor'!" exclaimed one of the sailors, "the young Don is past revenge, mistress. If he lives out the night 'tis more than I look to see."