"If I can!" hissed Bones. "Watch me!"
He dropped to all fours and bounded into the air in a clumsy fashion—not at all as an Iroquois warrior would have done it, hurtling like a projectile, with his whole body behind the knife. I stepped to the left and stabbed down, aiming to drive inside the collar-bone. But the light or something fooled me, and my blade slashed his cheek from eye to mouth, a great searing cut that laid open the whole side of his face.
He bellowed with surprize, and I was put out myself, for I had thought to finish him. Not a man moved for two or three breaths in the circle around us, for none had expected to see the fight terminated so quickly. Moira told me afterward that it was comical to see how Silver's jaw gaped.
Bones staggered back, the spurting blood blinding him so that he had to feel his way. I followed him slowly, half-prepared for a ruse, and he must have heard me, for he called out:
"Don't let him slay me, mates! I can't see, and he's a-comin' a'ter me!"
At this a dozen pirates jolted in between us, cursing and threatening me, and I gave ground toward where my friends were standing with Silver. The one-legged man hopped out to meet me. But I had scant satisfaction from him. He snatched the knife from my hand and, bending low, spat at me with a scorn words can not possibly convey:
"Ye bungler! As good as blind, and ye didn't do for him!"
And he swung by me on his crutch, hallooing to his friends:
"They're after Black Dog yon! Lay into the dirty swabs, mates!"
Knives were out all over the deck, and men were slashing and stabbing at one another. Bones was swallowed up in the mass of frantic humanity that milled around the restricted space between the butt of the mizzen and the rise of the poop.