I climbed the poop-ladder, and stepped to the place where my brother stood with the gunners patting caressingly the nozzle of the piece that had served his turn so bravely. Wallis, the master-gunner, stood looking earnestly to leeward, where a wall of mist held down upon the sea. He spoke a word to my brother and pointed that way. Dick had a spyglass in his hand, and immediately he set it to his eye, bringing it to bear. As I drew near, I heard him say he descried seven great ships which stood close-hauled towards us. Hereupon he gave the glass to the master-gunner; who, having looked awhile, said he took those ships for pirates. “And you’ll leave ’em the King’s ship to grind their teeth on, Captain,” said he, laughing.
But Dick shook his head, “No, no,” said he, “that sort of people don’t meddle with King’s ships. You get no dew of heaven in them. They’re going for some Spanish port, to sack a city, belike.”
“Well, ’tis a pity,” said Wallis. But indignation seized on me, and I said hotly:
“How is’t a pity? Do you wish to see your own people barbarously murdered, you base traitor!”
The man hung his head, grinning sourly, and looking sideways up at my brother; who told me to be off with my theatricals, as he called it. Whereupon the gunner laughed. I had returned upon him; but, from the cabin beneath, there came the dull report of a pistol-shot.
I knew what it was. Ouvery had seized on the occasion of my absence to enter the master’s cabin, had fired at the poor invalid, and, no doubt, murdered him.
And so it proved; for, on making haste to the cabin, I saw the Englishman lay dead in his bed, being shot through the skull into the brain. Yea, I did very narrowly escape a like fate myself; for that enormous and infernal villain, Ouvery, stood crouching in shadow behind the alley-way door, and, as I stepped by him, he let fly at me with a second pistol that he had. However, I had caught a shuffling motion he made before he fired at me, and, by an instinct, I turned my head in the nick of time. The bullet missed me.
I immediately drew my rapier, and made a pass upon him even as he leaped on me. But he came a little sideways, so that my point took him on the shoulder. He gave a yelping cry, and would have closed with me; but, quick as a flash, I dropped, casting myself with such force at his booted ankles, which I clutched, as handsomely tripped him, so that he fell all his length forward on the cabin floor. Thereupon, before ever he could recover himself, I sprang on top of him, and held him so that he could not anyways stir or lift himself up. I was mad with passion against this horrible wretch, and if I had had a pistol in my hand, I would have made no more to have set it to his head and murdered him, than to have killed a rat!
Now, the entire affair had passed in the space of a few moments, and the Captain had just entered the cabin. He stepped forward, and, in a voice that trembled, bade me stand up and let the Quartermaster alone. But this was an order I flatly denied to obey.
“Let him alone!” said I. “Why, he hath just endeavoured as much as possibly he could to murder me; and look you his bloody work there on the bed!”