"And why didn't you go with them?" I asked. She gave me an indignant look.
"And be leaving the two of ye! I am not that kind of friend, Bob."
Peter looked up from his task.
"You got to watch dot door, Bob. Andt, Moira, you bring me some rum. Maybe Murray gets back his sense before——"
I suddenly found myself unwilling to believe it could be so.
"He can't, Peter!"
"Ja," replied the Dutchman patiently. "Pretty soon he goes. He bleeds inside."
I stumbled to the doorway with my head in a whirl. Murray dying? 'Twas incredible! That tremendous personality, so masterful, so aloof, dominating all with whom he came in contact, saltily compounded of wickedness, greatness, wisdom and naive vanity! And explain it how you will, I suddenly discovered an admiration for him which had been growing for months beneath my surface resentment. Up to this moment I had detested him. But I choked now at the thought of his death. Whatever he was, he was no coward. And there was about his end in this sordid, haphazard fashion, stabbed by a blind man in the dark, a redeeming touch of high tragedy. He, whose ambitions had vaulted the stars, to perish by the hand of Pew! And in a moment when apparently he had snatched victory from defeat!
Mechanically I carried chests of gold and silver ingots from the heap of treasure and built a barricade across the doorway. There were several spare muskets and pistols, and I loaded these and placed them handy, then knelt behind the barricade and waited for what was to come. But nothing came. Feet shush-shushed in the sand all around the blockhouse; voices called, questioned and argued; an occasional shot was fired—no more. Flint's triumph had been too amazingly complete for him to grasp, and evidently there were dissensions in the pirates' ranks as to what the next step should be.
The hour-glass we had fetched from the Royal James stood by the door, and I remember that I turned it twice before Peter tapped my shoulder.