“Perhaps you might be let to go off to her in one of the boats,” finished Paradise dryly. “I think not, Master Sparrow.”
“It’s other guess messengers that they’ll send,” muttered Diccon. “They’re uncovering the guns, sir.”
Every man of those villains, save one, was of English birth; every man knew that the disabled ship was an English merchantman filled with peaceful folk, but the knowledge changed their plans no whit. There was a great hubbub; cries and oaths and brutal laughter, the noise of the gunners with their guns, the clang of cutlass and pike as they were dealt out, but not a voice raised against the murder that was to be done. I looked from the doomed ship, upon which there was now frantic haste and confusion, to the excited throng below me, and knew that I had as well cry for mercy to winter wolves.
The helmsman behind me had not waited for orders, and we were bearing down upon the disabled barque. Ahead of us, upon our larboard bow, was a patch of lighter green, and beyond it a slight hurry and foam of the waters. Half a dozen voices cried warning to the helmsman. It was he of the woman’s mantle, whom I had run through the shoulder on the island off Cape Charles, and he had been Kirby’s pilot from Maracaibo to Fort Caroline. Now he answered with a burst of vaunting oaths: “We’re in deep water, and there’s deep water beyond. I’ve passed this way before, and I’ll carry ye safe past that reef were’t hell’s gate!”
The desperadoes who heard him swore applause, and thought no more of the reef that lay in wait. Long since they had gone through the gates of hell for the sake of the prize beyond. Knowing the appeal to be hopeless, I yet made it.
“She is English, men!” I shouted. “We will fight the Spaniards while they have a flag in the Indies, but our own people we will not touch!”
The clamour of shouts and oaths suddenly fell, and the wind in the rigging, the water at the keel, the surf on the shore, made themselves heard. In the silence, the terror of the fated ship became audible. Confused voices came to us, and the scream of a woman.
On the faces of a very few of the pirates there was a look of momentary doubt and wavering; it passed, and the most had never worn it. They began to press forward toward the poop, cursing and threatening, working themselves up into a rage that would not care for my sword, the minister’s cutlass, or Diccon’s pike. One who called himself a wit cried out something about Kirby and his methods, and two or three laughed.
“I find that the rôle of Kirby wearies me,” I said. “I am an English gentleman, and I will not fire upon an English ship.”
As if in answer there came from our forecastle a flame and thunder of guns. The gunners there, intent upon their business, and now within range of the merchantman, had fired the three forecastle culverins. The shot cut her rigging and brought down the flag. The pirates’ shout of triumph was echoed by a cry from her decks and the defiant roar of her few remaining guns.