"Yet will I make that death sure!" St. Georges cried, springing at him. "Wounds do not always kill. You may recover this—from my thrust you shall never recover!"—and he shortened his sword to thrust it through his bare body.
"I am unarmed," the other wailed. "Mercy! I cannot live!"
"Ay, the mercy you showed me! The attempted murder of my child—the theft of her, the murder perhaps done by now—the galleys! Quick, your last prayer!"
Yet even as he spoke he knew that he was thwarted again. He could not strike, not slay, the thing before him. The villain was so weakened by his wound that he could scarce stand, even though grasping a bulkhead with his two hands; was—must be—dying. Why take his death, therefore, upon his soul when Fate itself was claiming him? It would be murder now, not righteous execution!
Moreover, he had another task to execute ere it was too late.
"Wretch," he exclaimed, "die as you are—find hell at last without my intervention! Yet, if you value a few more minutes of existence, gain them thus. Tell me, ere you go, where you have hidden my child—what done with——"
Before he could finish there came another roar from an exploding transport, the sound of beams and spars falling in the water round; a darkness over the cabin produced by the volumes of smoke; the screams of wounded and burnt Frenchmen hurled into the sea; the loud huzzas and yells of the British sailors. Then, as that roar and shock died away, there rose in the air another sound—a pæan of triumph that must have reached the ears of those on shore as it also reached the ears of those two men face to face in that cabin. From hundreds of throats it pealed forth, rising over all else—crackling wood, guns firing, the swish of oars, orders bawled, and shrieks of dead and dying.
It was the English sailors singing Henry Carey's song, almost new then, now known over all the world:
"God save our gracious king!
Long live our noble king!
God save the king!"
"Answer," St. Georges cried, "ere your master, the devil, gets you! ere I send you to him before even he requires you!"