A man immediately stepped into the room and threw his arm round the unresisting young officer.
The four men had rushed upon Willmington. Despair had maddened him into a sort of courage: he met the foremost one of them half way, and grasped him around the throat, with the clutch of death. The pirate also seized him, and the two men, animated with passions which though different in their natures were equally fierce in themselves, grappled like madmen, and staggered violently to and fro. The strong effort of the pirate, could not throw off Willmington, who clung to him with the tenacity of the serpent that tightens its refolded coils around the triumphant tiger that still presses its paw on its bruised head.
Lashed into rage, the pirate drew his knife: it gleamed for a moment overhead, and was descending, with certain death upon its point, when——
“Hold!” cried Appadocca, “no blood; help him Gregoire, Jose, help him, there.”
The voice of the captain arrested the disciplined arm.
Spurred by the immediate commands of their chief, the other pirates closed in upon Willmington, and by the exercise of violent force tore him away from their comrade, who stood for a moment with his eyes fiery and glaring from anger, and with his chest heaving heavily and quickly.
The prisoner kicked and shouted until the words rattled hoarsely in his throat; but he was now in no soft or gentle hands. Sooner than we can write it, he was tied hand and foot; his cries, nevertheless, still resounded through the place.
“Gag him,” was the immediate order.
The prisoner’s neckcloth was roughly undone, and violently thrust into his mouth.