All this time the lad had not uttered a single word. The rest of the smugglers never ceased shouting and swearing as they fought, using their lungs quite as lustily as they did their arms and legs, and making a deafening din. But the pale boy never uttered a sound, even when he was flung down. He was up again in a second, attacked Tregenna again, and succeeded this time in inflicting a slight wound on his arm. But the lieutenant was ready with his sword, and, just as the lad aimed a savage thrust at his breast, he parried it, and returned it by a cut across the lad’s head, which brought the blood flowing in a blinding stream down the side of his face.
At that moment the hand-to-hand fight caught the attention of the rest of the combatants, who were struggling and scuffling in the tangle of gorse and bramble which choked up the dell at the bottom of the slope.
And a second figure, as unlike as possible to the first, rose up out of the mêleé, and came to help his young comrade. A giant he was, this loose-limbed, heavy-built sea-dog, with grizzled hair and coarse, sullen red face, who swore loud and deep as he came on, and made for Tregenna with a run, pistol in one hand and cutlass in the other.
“Hey, Jack! Bill! Up with ye, lads, and let the cursed hound have as good as he’s given us! ’Tis the lubber that shot poor Tom! Up, lads!”
Up started from the gorse bushes a fresh couple of ruffians, the one a long, lean, lanky fellow in corduroy breeches and an old rug-coat, that had rather the air of a highwayman than of a son of the sea; the other a little, pimply-faced rogue in loose jacket and slops, who carried a pipe in his mouth, and a bludgeon in one hand.
This latter uttered a savage oath on perceiving who it was that they were to attack.
“’Tis the chief, the captain. Let’s cut his throat and carry him out, and hang him to’s own bowsprit, mates!” cried he, in a hoarse rasping voice, as he swung his bludgeon round his head and dashed up the slope after his comrades.
“Ay, that will we, and serve him well for his devotion to’s duty,” sang out the burly giant who led the attack.
“Have at ’un! Slash at ’un, Robin!” piped out the lean man, in a thin high voice that had a tone of unspeakable savagery in it.
Meanwhile, the lad, blinded by the blood that flowed from the wound in his head, had staggered aside, out of the way of Tregenna and his new assailants.