"Down!" re-echoed Kyd, instinctively, at the same moment.
Disciplined to obey the lightest order, every sailor cast himself upon the deck; but most of the pirates heard too late the warning command of their chief, and the same instant, from both of the quarter-deck guns, a shower of grape whistled like a whirlwind over the heads of the crew, while with the roar of cannon mingled the groans and shrieks of half a score of bucaniers.
"Vengeance! vengeance! Will ye be slaughtered like dogs! Upon them! Cut them down! Leave not one alive! Vengeance!"
Loud and terrific was the cry of vengeance, followed by a rush of the pirates aft that was irresistible. The crew were cut down scarcely ere they had risen to their feet, and sabred with hellish ferocity wherever they could be grappled with. In a moment's space two thirds of the seamen, who had been seized with a sudden panic at the demoniac rush of the pirates, whom they expected to have seen discomfited by the wholesale slaughter of their comrades, fell a prey to their savage ferocity, and the decks were deluged with their blood. Many leaped overboard, and others sprang into the rigging to fall dead into the sea.
"On, on! the brig is ours!" shouted the pirate chief, waving his reeking sabre. "Charge the quarter-deck!"
Thither Fitzroy, with Edwin, had retreated with the remnant of his crew, which were scarcely twenty in number.
"Surrender!" demanded Kyd.
"With our lives only!" was the firm reply.
"Dash at them, ye devils! But see ye touch not the two I have marked as my own game! Let your blades drink deep; we shall soon be masters here. Now on!"
They were received by a discharge of pistols, which only increased the ferocity of those who escaped the fire, and, cutlass in hand, the quarter-deck was carried after a desperate resistance. Fitzroy was taken prisoner with much difficulty, and at the cost of several lives of his assailants, while Kyd himself disarmed the secretary. To a man the brave crew were slain, either in fair fight while defending their station, or massacred in cold blood at the termination of the sanguinary conflict. The pirates were now masters of the brig, though its conquest had cost them full half of their number.