The Old One had made his last blunder. He had come by night, thinking to board a peaceful merchantman laden with a rich cargo, and had found himself at the head of his score of men on the deck of a man-of-war.
To all those below, but most of all to Philip Marsham chained in the gun room, it was a blind, confusing affair; but the sounds told the story; and though darkness hid the blood that was spilled, there was no mistaking the cries for quarter and the shrieks of agony.
Nor was there need for haste to reach the Rose of Devon, since the men left as keepers of the ship were too few to make sail. Captain Charles Winterton of the King's navy himself boarded the dark frigate by starlight, and a capital lark he found it, for behind his stern mien was a lively taste for such adventure. With lusty shouting he swept the handful of men from her deck, and having put a prize crew and his lieutenant in charge of her, he brought back a few more prisoners to join company with the luckless boarders he had sent down to be locked in irons below.
They were sad and angry gentlemen, for there are those to whom the laughter of a hundred sailors is worse than death by the sword. The first of them all to enter the gun room was Tom Jordan. His cheek was gashed and his hair was singed and blood smeared his shirt from shoulder to shoulder and one arm hung limp and broken; but though he was in great pain he smiled, and when they led him into the gun room and he saw Philip Marsham with bolts on wrists and ankles, he laughed aloud.
The fellow was a very mark and pattern of a scoundrel, but he had the courage and spirit of a hero, and had he first gone to sea under another king than James or Charles he might in some overwhelming danger have saved England. Great admirals are made of such timber—bold, resolute, utterly dauntless—and any bold man might have fallen into the same trap that had caught Tom Jordan. (Nay, had nothing warned Captain Winterton or aroused his suspicions, there was a fighting chance for Tom Jordan to have taken his ship from him even so.) But Tom Jordan had gone to sea in the days when the navy was going to the dogs, and, like many another lad of spirit who left the King's service to join the pirates, he had adventured with the Algerians before he led the gentlemen of Bideford. And at last, hazarding a final effort to retrieve his luck, he had unwittingly thrust his head into the halter.
Yet, though they had broken his body, they had failed to touch his courage; despite his pain, he could smile and even laugh. Turning his great grief into a jest, he cried, "Holla, O bravest of boatswains! This is a joy I had not looked for. It seems that, if hang I must, I shall not hang alone." And laughing again, right merrily, he swooned away, which Captain Charles Winterton, having himself come down with the others to see them all shackled, watched with quiet interest.
They brought down the carpenter, who was shaking like a man with an ague, and his beard waggled as he shook. They brought down Martin Barwick, whose face was drawn and haggard, and his hand rubbed his throat, for it itched in a prophetic manner. Then came Harry Malcolm, who stopped before Phil and spat at him and cursed him, and Paul Craig, who had neither eye nor thought for any one besides himself, and a dozen others of whom there was not one that failed to revile at their erstwhile boatswain. A hapless time of it Philip Marsham had among them, but it added little to his great burden of misery.
Nor, for the matter of that, did reviling content them; for toward morning, when the others were dozing, Harry Malcolm, whom they had locked to a longer chain, crawled over to where Phil lay and very craftily tried to kill him with bare hands. The guard cried out, but instead of stopping, the man redoubled his efforts to throttle the lad whom he had seized from behind when he was asleep; whereupon the guard struck a sharp blow with the butt of his musket, and when the corporal had come running and had felt of Harry Malcolm's wrist and had listened for his heart and had turned him over on his back, he cursed the guard with fluent oaths for robbing the gallows.