Gascoyne received Henry’s speech at first with a frown and then with a smile.
“You have taken a strange time and way to jest, Henry,” said he, crossing his arms on his broad chest and gazing fixedly in the youth’s face.
“You will not throe me off my guard thus,” said Henry, sternly. “You are my prisoner. I know you to be a pirate. At any rate you will have to prove yourself to be an honest man before you quit this hut a free man. Mother, leave this place that I may lock the door upon him.”
The widow did not move, but Gascoyne made a step towards her son.
“Another step and I will fire. Your blood shall be on your own head, Gascoyne.”
As Gascoyne still advanced, Henry pointed the pistol straight at his breast and pulled the trigger, but no report followed—the priming, indeed, flashed in the pan but that was all!
With a cry of rage and defiance, Henry leaped upon Gascoyne like a young lion. He struck at him with the pistol, but the latter caught the weapon in his powerful hand, wrenched it from the youth’s grasp and flung it to the other end of the apartment.
“You shall not escape me,” cried Henry; aiming a tremendous blow with his fist at Gascoyne’s face. It was parried, and the next moment the two closed in a deadly struggle.
It was a terrible sight for the widow to witness, these two Herculean men exerting their great strength to the utmost in a hand-to-hand conflict in that small hut like two tigers in a cage.
Henry, although nearly six feet in height, and proportionally broad and powerful, was much inferior to his gigantic antagonist; but to the superior size and physical force of the latter he opposed the lithe activity and the fervid energy of youth, so that to an unpractised eye it might have seemed doubtful at first which of the two men had the best chance.