"Helm aweather—jam hard!" roared the captain.
"Ay, ay, sir!"—and we wore round so as to present our other broad-side to the enemy.
While this manoeuvre was going on, the bows of the Sea-Sprite had fallen off in the wind, so as to bring us side by side, within half pistol shot. She returned the fire with a vengeance, and several of our brave tars fell wounded or slain to the deck.
"Ready! blaze away!"—but the sound of our captain's voice was lost in the thunder of the heavy ordnance.
The battle now commenced in real earnest. The cannon bellowed, small arms rattled, the combatants yelled, the dying groaned, the iron thunder-bolt crashed, riving the vessel's oaken timbers, and a dense sulphur-cloud overspread the scene of furious commotion, so that we fought with an invisible enemy. We could see nothing save the streaming lightning of the cannon, or the fiend-like figures that worked our aftermost guns, begrimmed with powder and blood, stripped nearly naked, and sweltering in their eager toil. As the smoke occasionally lifted, however, the battered bulwarks of the enemy, and the glimmering streaks along her black waist, showed that our fire had been rightly directed; and the irregularity with which it was returned, told the confusion that prevailed on her decks. Several times we attempted to run her aboard, but they discovered our intentions in time to avoid us.
At length a discharge from the well-directed gun of old Benjamin, took effect in her fore-top. The topmast came thundering down with all its rigging, over the foresail. Having thus lost the benefit of her head sail, she rounded to, and her jib-boom came in contact with our fore rigging.
"Now is our time!—into her, boarders!" roared Dacres, leaping upon the pirate's forecastle deck.
But the order was useless—they were already hard on his track. A close and desperate struggle now took place. Pistols cracked, sabres gleamed, and deadly blows were dealt on either side, till a rampart of the slain and wounded was raised high between the furious combatants. Gloomy and dark as an arch-fiend, the pirate leader raged among his men, urging them on with threats and curses, in a voice of thunder, and sweeping down all opposition before his dripping blade. But Dacres, backed by his well-trained boarders, received them on the points of their pikes, with a coolness and bravery that made them recoil upon each other, like surges from a rock-ribbed coast. Thus the fight continued with various success, till the attention of the bucaneers was arrested by an unearthly shout in the rear, and the tall figure of Percy was seen, laying about him with whirlwind impetuosity, his long, untrimmed hair flying wildly in the commotion of the atmosphere, his features working with the madness that controlled him, and his dilated eyes flashing with a fierce, unnatural fire upon his opponents. All quailed before him. Wherever his merciless arm fell there was an instant vacancy. Although a score of cutlasses were glancing, meteor-like, around his person, as if by a spell, he remained uninjured. At length his eye detected the pirate leader. Dashing aside all before him, with one bound he was at his side. The fierce chief started in amazement at the sight of him whom he supposed many a league from the spot, if not dead, but quickly recovered his stern and gloomy bearing.
"Monster! where is she?" shouted Percy.
"Ask the sharks!" replied the captain, lunging at him with his sabre.