Since I had regained our tender I had been standing enrapt, gazing with all my might at the smoke first, and then up into the shrouds again at the enemy, taking no heed of my own craft. But now, as no one stirred, to my hearing, to obey my orders, I turned round sharply to chide them, but as I did so I started and felt myself go pale.
"Good God!" I exclaimed, "good God! What is this?"
There were but three men, I recollected in an instant, that had leaped back into the galliot from the Snow, and those three men were here in the ship behind me. But, alas! two were now dead; the third, Israel Cromby, was a-lying on his back, gasping out his last few breaths.
"Oh!" says I, "oh! my poor men--this is a sorry sight for any commander to see. Cromby, man, it is ill with you, I fear?"
He opened his eyes, all covered with a film like a poor partridge a gunner has knocked over, and then he whispered--
"Sir, sir. There is a poor old woman down Rotherhithe way--she is--my mother. She--drawed--my money--tell her--she has no other means whereby to live--if you--get back, see to----. Sir, I've done my duty."
So he died and joined the others, and went his way to meet his God.
And I was left alone.
From the Etoyle there came no sound, nor from the woods neither did any come. So I told myself this would not do. I must be stirring. Thinking which, I lowered down the boat, having to shift the bodies of my poor dead men to get at the tackle, and then got down into it, and so to the Etoyle. It was no use wasting time when I got to it, I reflected; if any were alive of the enemy they must be encountered soon or late--as well now as then. And the negro I did feel sure was dead. Otherwise, he would have blowed up the Snow or else come forth.
Making fast the boat, I clambered up over the side of the buccaneer's craft, and then I saw pretty quick all that had happened, looking first to see for the negro. He was done for, as I had imagined, and was lying flat on his back at the foot of the hatchway, his match burnt out in his dead black hand, which, I saw later, had been singed and scorched by the flames; yet that hand had been perilously near to the powder-barrels while the slow match lasted, as it lay all stretched out.