CHAPTER XII
OF BATTLE, MURDER AND RESOLUTION DAY, HIS POINT OF VIEW
And now, nothing heeding my defenceless situation and the further horrors that might be mine aboard this accursed pirate ship, I nevertheless knew great content for that, with every plunge and roll of the vessel, I was so much the nearer Nombre de Dios town where lay prisoned my enemy, Richard Brandon; thus I made of my sinful lust for vengeance a comfort to my present miseries, and plotting my enemy's destruction, found therein much solace and consolation.
I had crept into a sheltered corner and here, my knees drawn up, my back against one of the weather guns, presently fell a-dozing. I was roused by a kick to find the ship rolling prodigiously, the air full of spray and a piping wind, and Captain Belvedere scowling down on me, supporting himself by grasping a backstay in one hand and flourishing a case-bottle in the other.
"Ha, 's fish, d'ye live yet?" roared he in drunken frenzy. "Ha'n't Black Pompey done your business? Why, then—here's for ye!" And uttering a great oath, he whirled up the bottle to smite; but, rolling in beneath his arm, I staggered him with a blow of my fettered hands, then (or ever I might avoid him) he had crushed me beneath his foot: and then Joanna stood fronting him. Pallid, bare-headed, wild of eye, she glared on him and before this look he cowered and shrank away.
"Drunken sot!" cried she. "Begone lest I send ye aloft to join yon carrion!" And she pointed where Job's stiff body plunged and swung and twisted at the reeling yard-arm.
"Nay, Jo, I—I meant him no harm!" he muttered, and turning obedient to her gesture, slunk away.
"Ah, Martino," said Joanna, stooping above me, "'twould seem I must be for ever saving your life to you, yes. Are you not grateful, no?"
"Aye, I am grateful!" quoth I, remembering my enemy.
"Then prove me it!"