"So have I washed out the pollution of thy touch on this fair creature," he said, attempting to disengage Grace from his hold as he fell backward.
But his arm so firmly encircled her, that he was forced to sever the tendons of it with his cutlass before he could release her from this horrible embrace of lust and death.
"Oh God!" he said, involuntarily, "that I should be an actor in such a scene as this. Yet my presence here has been her preservation. I will save her and protect her now, even with the life of the captain!"
"His life is already ended," said the bucanier, who, on witnessing the fate of his comrade, had quietly dropped the lifeless form of the maid where he had found her.
He pointed as he spoke to his body.
"Dead!" exclaimed the youth. "Then am I chief here. I will save, for her sake, all that are left alive. But she shall not know me! She shall ever be ignorant to whom she is indebted. Yet methinks I would like to send by her a message to the haughty daughter of the house of Bellamont." This was spoken with bitter irony. "But I must try to restore her."
He poured a vase of water over her forehead, and moistened her lips, and she revived.
"Where am I? What has transpired? Who—how—where—"
She glanced wildly around, and everything that had passed flashed upon her mind. She bounded from him with a deplorable cry, and covered her face with her hands. "Mercy, oh God! mercy!"
"Grace!" he said, in a gentle tone.