"Go to hell yourself!" shouted the Englishman, grasping his oar, and dealing the man in front of him a blow that stretched him by the side of the negro.
"Santa Virgen! who is that?" cried the two sternmost pirates.
"The Englishman!" exclaimed one of them, pressing forwards towards Hodges, but stumbling over the men at the bottom of the boat, which now rocked violently from the furious struggle going on within it.
"Ma—— Ma——!" groaned the negro again, now seemingly in the death agony—His eyes stood out from their sockets, and glittered like stars in the darkness; his tongue hung from his mouth, swollen and convulsed.
"By the living God! if you don't unfasten the negro, I'll knock you all into the river."
"Maldito Ingles! Picaro gojo!"
"Let him go! Let him go! Holy Virgin!" yelled the three Mexicans, as one of them who had approached the Englishman was knocked bellowing into his place by a furious blow of the oar. "It's the devil himself!" cried the pirates, and one of them pushed the negro towards Hodges.
"Stand back!" cried the midshipman, "and take off his neck-iron. If you strangle him, you are all dead men."
One of the Mexicans laid hold of the negro, who was coiled up like a ball, and drew the chain out of the collar. The poor slave's limbs fell back, dead and powerless as pieces of wood. A gasping, rattling noise in his throat alone denoted that life was still in him.
"Stand back!" repeated Hodges, stooping down, and endeavouring, by vigorous friction with a blanket, to restore the negro to consciousness. During this life-and-death struggle, the boat, left at the mercy of the waters, had been borne swiftly away by the stream, and was now floating amongst a number of the enormous trees which the Mississippi carries down by thousands to the sea. The Mexicans resumed their places, and with their utmost strength began to pull up-stream. Not far from the frail skiff, beneath the mantle of fog covering the river, a huge tree-trunk was seen coming directly towards the boat—Hodges had barely time to bid the Mexicans be careful, when it shot by them. As it did so, a strange, unnatural cry saluted their ears, and straining his eyes through the darkness, the young Englishman saw a head and a hand appearing above one of the limbs of the forest giant.