Delivering, as he spoke, a cruel blow in the face of his opponent, Voysye felled him to the ground, and pursuing Gillian, who hearing the scuffle had paused to look behind her, threw a rude arm around her waist, crying,—
“Come, now, I’ll have one kiss, if I die for’t.”
But Gillian, lithe as a cat, struggled and fought after her kind, so successfully that the ruffian had not been able to snatch his kiss before a heavy foot reached him with a kick, and a furious voice roared in his ear,—
“Avast there, you”—but the epithets are not writable, and in these days no man, however angry, would use them in a woman’s presence. They were, however, effectual, for with an oath quite as furious and quite as unmentionable, Voysye quitted his hold upon the girl’s waist and, turning, aimed at Cromwell’s face a buffet which, however, only reached his shoulder. Angered, not so much at the assault as the insubordination, the captain seized his sheathed rapier, and dealt with the hilt a blow upon the sailor’s head which prostrated him, bleeding and senseless, at Gillian’s feet.
“You’ve killed him, and they’ll hang you for murder!” cried she. “Hide him, and get away with your vessels before it’s found out.”
“And would you go with me?” demanded Cromwell, gazing curiously in the girl’s fierce, flushed face.
“Yes—no—yes, if you could get clear, and save your neck and your money,” returned Gillian with cynical frankness.
“Ay, I thought as much, Mistress,” retorted the sailor, “and I’m a fool to care for such a woman; but still I do, and when I go you shall go too, or if I’m hung you shall have the price of a soul. Thirty pieces satisfied Judas, didn’t it?”
“Here’s another man coming,” replied Gillian coldly, and with no more words she walked away, while Cromwell, turning to the new-comer, said,—