And with half her rigging torn asunder, the Talon, a sorry sight now, could not run her own length.
In seconds the Talon's decks were slippery with blood from poop to forecastle; Cutlass drew and fired his pistols with his left hand as he crossed swords with his right—three of his attackers went down howling in agony, and the swordsman he had killed outright with a ball in the face had been replaced by two more.
"We've come for your head, Robbin Cutlass!"
"Then you'll parry this to get it!" Cutlass gritted savagely. The Englishman was a split-second late, and the corsair's sword split his throat from chin to collar-bone.
But they were too many. Was it to be ever so?
Desperately, blood coursing from a reopened old wound in his left shoulder which for some reason had never healed completely. Cutlass groped for the last of his pistols. His clawing fingers slipped on something hard at his waist. He must—must—
Press it!
Far away, in another Space and in another Time, an old man's eyes glittered. There was the signal, but the chances were that young Robbin Cutlass hadn't given it from sheer boredom! Swiftly, his short, thick fingers flicked the breadth of a time-warp quadrant, altered the mass and continuum ratios as great banks of machinery seemed to float in their own blue-green glow and throbbed with the mighty power of the Sun itself.
But it was true, there were some things even science could not change....