“And that brave young fellow, Mr. Rosenthal, is foremost among the boarding party, fighting like another Paul Jones,” he added.
Britomarte listened breathlessly; but waited quietly until her patient had drained the glass that she held to his lips, and then she gently laid his head back, put down the glass, and rushed up on deck.
She reached that horrible deck—the scene of the late carnage. It was slippery with human gore, and spattered with brains, and littered with the splinters of shivered timbers and shreds of rent canvas, and fragments of broken weapons, and obstructed with dead bodies; and over all hung a sulphurous smoke of gunpowder that obscured the vision and blackened all the sails and rigging; and above all rang the clash of steel, the report of firearms, the screams of the wounded, and the yells and cheers of the combatants.
Through all these horrors Britomarte rushed to the starboard side of the ship to which the Sea Scourge had been clawed up so closely that any one might easily pass from one to the other.
On the deck of the Sea Scourge the battle was raging fiercely.
At first, her senses all bewildered with horror, Britomarte perceived before her only a pandemonium of clanging, clashing, thundering, smoking, blazing, bleeding, screaming, yelling chaos! But presently her straining eyes made out the figure of Justin.
Conspicuous above all the rest by his great height and strength, and by the grandeur of his inspired countenance, which seemed as that of a god of war, and flinging himself wherever the fight was fiercest, he soon became the one target of the enemy, who struck at him from all sides.
Seeing him thus surrounded and desperately fighting, Britomarte clasped her hands, exclaiming:
“Oh, Heavenly Father protect him! In Thine infinite mercy protect him!”
Then, no longer able to restrain herself, on seeing him in the most imminent peril, she caught up a cutlass from an arm-chest near, and crying: