'Faster, you lazy dogs! Bend your backs to it, you louts.'
The rowers increased their effort, breathing stertorously. The man laughed again, softly, as before, a fleering, mocking sound.
'So, so. We've had the luck to win clear of that gin with no more than a scratch. Yet, God's my life, it's more than a scratch. I'm bleeding like a Christian martyr.'
'It's nothing,' Blood reassured him. 'You've lost some blood. But once aboard we'll staunch the wound and make you comfortable.'
'Faith, you talk like a sawbones.'
'It's what I am.'
'Gadso! Was there ever greater luck. Eh, Isabelita? A swordsman to rescue me and a doctor to heal me, all in one. There's a providence watching over me this night. An omen, sweetheart.'
'A mercy,' she corrected on a crooning note, and drew closer to him.
And now from their scraps of talk, Blood pieced together the tale of their exact relationship. They were an eloping pair, these two — this Englishman, whose name was George Fairfax, and this little hidalga of the great family of Sotomayor. His late assailants were her brother and two friends, bent upon frustrating the elopement. Her brother was the Spaniard who had escaped uninjured from the encounter, and it was his pursuit in force which she dreaded and for which she continually looked back towards the receding mole. By the time, however, that agitated lights came dancing at last along the water's edge, the long–boat was in the black shadow of a two–masted brig, bumping against her side, whilst from her deck a gruff English voice was hailing them.
The lady was the first to swarm the accommodation ladder. Then followed Fairfax, with Blood immediately and so closely behind as to support him and, indeed, partly carry him aboard.