"This made some noise, however, and one of those below put up his head inquiringly from the fore-hatch; just as he did so, I rushed at him with a yell, and by one blow of the axe cleft him to the nose! He sank to the foot of the ladder on the deck below. On seeing this, his messmate, supposing that the cutter was boarded by French or Caribs, came rushing up with his cutlass, but I met him with one fell swing of my weapon. Missing his head, it fell on his collar-bone; his sword-arm dropped; he sank against the combing of the hatchway, and glared at me with a ghastly and bewildered expression; but as he attempted to crawl on deck, I soon despatched him by repeated blows—for now when I saw blood, mine was boiling like liquid lava.
"With another yell of mad triumph I dragged his body to leeward, shot it into the sea, and it vanished amidst the white foam that smoked under the counter of the cutter, as she flew from wave to wave.
(At this point of his dreadful narrative, Knuckleduster's face glowed purple with excitement; his eyes glared like two hot cinders; his thick coarse nostrils were dilated, and he bit his swollen lips to repress the passionate triumph of the infernal fury he seemed to feel again.)
"As he fell into the sea, my axe dropped with him. If the gunner's mate came up with cutlass or pistols, a death as sudden as any I had bestowed would be my reward! I thought of dropping a cold shot on his head through the skylight, forgetting for the moment that the cutter was unarmed. Then I caught up a handspike from the windlass, and was rushing aft just as he stepped on deck. The first view he had of me, and the blood with which I was covered, seemed to explain everything. He glanced round for a weapon, and then sprang forward, as full of confidence as a frigate with a free sheet, and tried to grapple, barehanded, with me; but retiring a pace or two, to give the handspike full swing, I hurled it again and again on his head and shoulders till he sank powerless and motionless at my feet. Then I tore a ring from his finger, and a watch and purse from his pocket, as being things that were of no use to him or the fishes either; and as he was too heavy for me to lift, I triced up the lee quarter-board, and shoved him through it into the sea.
"Dead men tell no tales—and the fourth deed was done!
"I was alone in the cutter—alone on the sea!
"To be alone was to be independent; to be independent was to be free. I felt no compunction for what I had done; these men were my enemies, and I could have slain them all over again had the double deed been to do.
"I descended to the little cabin, where the lantern was still burning. On the table lay the letter which the gunner's mate had been writing, and the ink was yet wet on it. It was to his old mother at Greenwich, saying all his back pay and prize-money were lodged to her account in London; to keep her heart easy and be jolly, as she would have him by her side again, and as Sir John Jervis had promised him promotion for his conduct at La Fleur d'Epée; that all he could send home was a lock of hair for her and Emmy, and a great deal more bosh of the same kind; so I laughed as I read, and tore it to fritters.
"What! you groan, do you, Mr. Ellis?—groan like the wind sighing through a lee scupper or the galley funnel! Why, you swab of a sojer, we are both fighting men, only that you fight for honour and humbug, I for plunder and pay!
"In a locker I found a bottle of brandy, two case-bottles of skiedam, and some wine; so I set to, and drank from them all in succession—raw, with the jacket off, none of your grog for me—till the whole cabin seemed full of cloven heads, gashed faces, and gunner's mates; and then sinking on the deck, I remembered no more of that night, or it may be of the next day—or, for aught I know, of the next after that.