The deck of the pirate was crowded with men, numbering eighty or ninety, apparently, in all, while the crew of the yacht, exclusive of the wounded, consisted of less than forty-five. But cool courage and confidence in the right, opposed to fierce and sanguinary passions in an evil cause, count to the righteous side in a battle for twice the number of opponents. The earl trembled for the issue. But the brave Kenard, with his knowledge of the spirit of his men, and his confidence in their English courage and in their contempt for pirates, whom he gave them the credit of despising as cordially as he himself did, gave not an anxious thought about the result, assured that, if each man did his duty, victory would side with the honest and brave. During the exchange of broadsides, he had kept his place on the quarter-deck, encouraging his men by his cheering voice: the earl was also beside him, scarcely less energetic in inspiring the crew with his own spirit. The first lieutenant was actively engaged, sword in hand, in directing the fire of the battery; while Mark, who was in a new element, flamed with the fierce fire of war, and seemed, amid the smoke and roar of battle, to have been suddenly endued with a new and sublime character. He was everywhere where his presence was most needed, encouraging and cheering on the men both by his voice and example; but, notwithstanding his animation and fire, was as cool and collected in the sagacious orders he gave as the oldest veteran.
But, with all his devotion to the fight, he forgot not that the cabin contained a lovely creature, helpless as she was beautiful, whose life depended on the issue of that night's conflict. Though his heart may have been proof against her charms, being shielded with the proof-plate of another's love, yet he felt an interest akin to love in her fate. She was the cousin of Kate! She had expressed an interest in him that he could never forget! He had saved her life! It was a second time endangered! These were all motives to sympathy; and, properly nurtured, the germes were there from which might spring a tenderer and deeper feeling. But he had no room in his breast for a second love. There was but one polar star to the eye of his affections; and steadily he steered the bark of his hopes towards it, although, like the north star of the mariner, the farther and nearer he sailed in its direction, it would higher and higher ascend the skies, mocking his aspiring ambition. Nevertheless, he resolved to steer steadily onward, even if he should perish at last amid the icebergs of her cold and wintry affections. But whatever a lover, in the warmth of his affections, may sincerely feel and solemnly vow—love unrequited, like the Persian flower, that withers when the sun is hidden by a passing cloud, without the warmth of its sun will speedily die. Time, in the present instance, will test the truth of this proposition.
The vessels were now within twenty feet of each other, the pirate rising heavily on each wave, and surging nearer and nearer at every heave of the sea. Silence was broken only at intervals by a groan from a wounded bucanier, and terrible expectation hung over the two vessels. The moon at length broke from a cloud and lighted up the scene. There were beauty and peace floating on her silvery beams; but the passions of men reigned, and their souls were closed to everything bright and lovely. Yet they hailed her light with a shout, for by it foe was able to see foe nearly with the distinctness of noonday.
"Now pour in your fire!" shouted the cool Kenard to his crew; "aim wherever you can see the glitter of an eye!"
The bows of the pirate vessel were within an oar's length of the yacht's larboard and weather quarter as this order was given, and a dozen half-naked, savage-looking men were just in the act of leaping into the main rigging. The simultaneous discharge of pistols, muskets, and blunderbusses was like the explosion of a volcano, and but one third of the bucaniers succeeded in springing alive into the chains: the remainder plunged, dead ere they struck the surface, into the sea. The fire was answered by a loud yell from the pirates, and a few straggling shots only from pistols; for these demons seemed to trust more to their dangerous cutlasses in their wild conflicts than to firearms. They now pressed forward over the bows in dark swarms. From every part of her that offered any prospect of reaching the yacht, they leaped without waiting for the vessels to come together, with cries and execrations most appalling, into the main chains, or sprang for the bulwarks, catching recklessly by their hands at whatever offered. Many fell short into the sea, or were hurled into it by those who met them; some leaped overboard, swam to the side, and drew themselves up by the rigging that hung over the water, but fell back with curses and cries of pain, leaving their hands, severed at the wrists and dripping with gore, clinging to the rope. Grappling-irons were thrown on deck, but were cast overboard by the crew before they could be entangled; and wherever a pirate struck the side of the yacht with his foot, he was opposed by one of its defenders.
Three times the Earl of Bellamont sheathed his sword in the breasts of as many of these ferocious beings and cast them backward dead into the sea, and as a fourth, who had thrown himself bodily upon the quarter-deck, made a tremendous stroke at him with his yataghan, he blew out his brains with a pistol. Everywhere, in their first daring attempt to board them, were they encountered with equal resolution and success, and of the twenty pirates that by some means or other succeeded in reaching the brig, not one retained a foothold on her decks—every individual of them being either slain outright, or hurled maimed into the water, where several swam about amid dark spots of blood, lifting their handless limbs, and in vain calling to their comrades to take them on board. The fate of these checked for a moment the ardour of the remainder, and they waited till the vessels should come together before making a second attempt.
The pirate, who had some time before dropped his lugsails, to prevent his shooting past the yacht, towards which the waves were slowly urging him, was now lifted and dashed with great violence against it, striking her on her quarter, carrying away her bulwarks, and opening her planks in several places.
"Throw yourselves into her now," shouted the pirate chief, leaping forward and waving his cutlass. "Flesh your blades in their carcasses! Give no quarter to beards—but spare bright eyes! Board! board! clamber over each other's backs—press on, press on! Follow your young leader. He will shame the best of ye!"
Like a crew of demons, yelling and shouting menaces of death, mingled with horrible execrations and oaths of vengeance for their slaughtered comrades, they obeyed the energetic and sanguinary orders of their chief. They were headed by the pirate's first lieutenant and a youth with long fair hair, which, in the light of the moon, shone like silver, who, with strange recklessness of life, cast himself from the bows as they approached the side of the yacht, and fell feet foremost into the midst of a grove of sharp steel, amid a shower of balls, that, while they told in the bodies of his followers, seemed to pass him as if he carried a charmed life. The old pirate captain himself headed another party near the stern of his vessel, which was slowly swinging round towards the yacht's bows, apparently for the purpose, when it should come in contact, of boarding on the forecastle. Here stood Edwards the lieutenant, with a force of fifteen men to oppose him; while midships, and near the companion-way, Mark was stationed at the head of a third of the yacht's crew, and, acting as a reserve, was prepared to throw in the weight of his numbers as should be required, either on the forecastle or the quarter-deck, at which latter point, at the head of an equal number, stood the captain, supported by the earl's good blade, ready to repel the attempt to board from the bows of the pirate.
More like devils incarnate than human beings, the pirates followed their young leader, and cast themselves from the bows, some running over the heads of their comrades and leaping on board; some, more active, flinging somersets through the air into the mêlée; and all rushing, crowding, and falling upon the deck in every possible attitude, seemingly indifferent, so that the yacht's decks received them, whether they landed head foremost or upright on their feet. Such a torrent of desperate men was irresistible. The defenders of the quarter-deck were borne down by the mere weight of the assailants' bodies, or their cutlasses were turned aside like feathers as they were levelled to meet this novel and terrible human storm. Immediately in advance of himself and the earl, the captain had placed half a dozen men with pikes, the bristly points of which served to protect, in some measure, their position by turning to one side the current of boarders.