“Are you much hurt, sir?” said one of the men.
“Don’t know yet,” said Hilary, as Tully was dragged off him. “Confound the brutes! I’ll serve them out for this. Is any one killed?”
“I ain’t,” growled Tom Tully, with his hand to the back of his head. “But that there slash went half through my tail, and I’ve got one on the cheek.”
Tom Tully’s wound on the cheek proved to be quite a slight cut, and the other man was only stunned, but the injury to his pigtail was more than he could bear.
“Of all the cowardly games as ever I did come acrost,” he growled, “this here’s ’bout the worst. Think o’ trying to cut off a sailor’s pigtail! It’s worse than mutiny!”
“Hold your tongue, you stupid fellow!” cried Hilary, who could not help feeling amused even then. “Why, don’t you see that your tail has saved your head?”
“Who wanted his head saved that way?” growled Tom Tully. “It’s cowardly, that’s what it is! I don’t call it fair fighting to hit a man behind.”
“Silence!” exclaimed Hilary; and as the trampling went on overhead he tried to make out what the enemy were doing.
He was startled to find Sir Henry on board, but though he looked upon him as a friend, he felt no compunction now in meeting him as an enemy who must take his chance. Betraying him when a fugitive was one thing, dealing with him as one of a party making an attack upon a king’s ship another.
A chill of dread ran through him for a moment as he thought of the possibility of Sir Henry’s daughter being his companion, but a second thought made him feel assured that she could not be present at a time like this.