Blackbeard made no answer in words, but his eyes narrowed, his fingers tightened on the pistol, and he made an almost imperceptible movement. The Frenchman read the intention in his eyes. The smile disappeared, giving place to a look of grim resolution. One twist of the wrist, and the rapier point, an instant before at the man’s throat, flickered like a flash of lightning and pricked him in the forearm. He winced; the pistol fell clattering to the floor; and he let out a cry, a loud wild cry that must have rung through the ship from stem to stern: a rallying cry to his crew.
Next instant a door at the farther end of the round-house, which had stood ajar, was flung open, and a water-bottle hurtled across the room. It missed the Frenchman’s head by an inch, and crashed against the wall. Through the door rushed two men, one behind the other. In the foremost Martin recognised Mr. Seymour, the tenant of the upper floor whose dealings with Blackbeard had first awakened his suspicions. It was he who had thrown the bottle; the second man was for the moment hidden from view behind him.
Between the table and the wall on either side there was only a narrow gangway, partly obstructed by the chairs. As he dashed forward, Seymour snatched at a cutlass hanging above the rack of arms. He grasped it, but by the blade, for the hilt was higher than his head. To make effective play with it he must needs lift it from its nail and reverse it: even then the narrow gangway would allow him no room to swing it, nor the low roof space in which to bring it above his head: he could only give point.
But before he could reverse the weapon and grasp the hilt Gollop had found himself. Dropping his warrant, he flung himself forward with a leonine roar. Recalling the fight afterwards Martin wondered how the burly constable had managed to squeeze himself between the table and the wall to meet the attack. The chair went clattering along the floor; a blow from Gollop’s sledge-hammer fist, with sixteen stone of brawn behind it, caught Seymour clean between the eyes and sent him hurtling over the broken chair upon the man behind. He dropped; his companion staggered, recovered himself, and, shouting a furious curse, sprang forward cutlass in hand.
Protected in some degree by the huddled form of Seymour, he made a desperate lunge at Gollop, who had been carried forward by his own momentum, and could now neither advance nor retreat. At this critical moment Martin seized the second chair, and, gathering his strength, hurled it at Slocum. It took him at the level of his belt and doubled him up.
Then from without came a medley of shouts and the rustling thud of bare feet upon the boards.
CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FOURTH
GOLLOP AT BAY
The light of battle gleamed in Gollop’s eyes. He was no longer the constable, whose weapons were a staff and a rattle, but the boatswain of old, who had borne his part in many a fight with pirates in the days when he sailed the far seas with Captain Leake.