Like one who endeavours to flee from devouring flames, that rush in merciless fury to close him in, and finds every passage, every outlet, or crevice for escape barred against him, the unhappy man reeled back into the room in the madness of despair.
“Murder—murder,” he shouted, “John!—Charles!—James!—Edward!—Murder!—Murder!—pirates!—fiends, pirates, robbers, police, police.”
“Ho! there! Domingo,—Gregoire!—Alphonso!—Jose!” called Appadocca, with his habitual calmness.
Four men on the call entered the room. Their flashing eyes shone from beneath their overhanging red caps, and their long beards and mustachios exhibited a peculiar appearance under the silvery light of the tapers, which tended to display to the full their dark and dry complexions.
“Secure him,” said Appadocca pointing to Willmington, as the men entered.
“Do not touch him for your lives,” cried the young officer, the son of James Willmington, that sat on his right.
He, like his father, had been under the power of a supernatural terror from the moment that Appadocca entered, and had been addressed as a visitant from another world; but when he became awake to the fact that the intruder was a being of flesh and blood, he grasped his sword that lay on a table, and rushed at Appadocca.
“Do not touch him for your lives,” he cried, while he made a lunge at the breast of the pirate-captain who still retained his seat. The point was already touching the cloak of Appadocca, when the heavy weapons of some unseen individuals from without, shattered the slender sword into a thousand pieces.
“Secure you the young man, Baptiste,” said Appadocca, unmoved by the danger which he had so narrowly escaped.