"Them cliffs be perilous high, Cap'n!"

"My hook is more perilous, Tom Day! Off wi' you, ye dogs, or I'll show
ye a liver yet and be--"

He stopped all at once as, faint at first yet most dreadful to hear,
there rose a man's cry, chilling the flesh with horror, a cry that
waxed and swelled louder and louder to a hideous screaming that
shrilled upon the night and, sinking to an awful bubbling murmur, was
gone.

Up sprang Tressady to stare away across Deliverance whence this
dreadful cry had come, and I saw his hook tap-tapping at his great
chin; then beyond these shining sands was the thunderous roar of a
great gun, a furious rattle of small-arms that echoed and re-echoed
near and far, and thereafter single shots in rapid succession.
Hereupon rose shouts and cries of dismay:

"Lord love us we'm beset! O Cap'n, we be took fore and aft. What shall
us do, Cap'n? Yon was a gun. What o' the ship, Cap'n--what o' the
ship?"

"Yonder--look yonder! Who comes?" cried Tressady, pointing towards
Deliverance Beach with his glittering hook.

Twisting my head as I lay, I looked whither he pointed, and saw one
that ran towards us, yet in mighty strange fashion, reeling in wide
zig-zags like a drunken man; and sometimes he checked, only to come on
again, and sometimes he fell, only to struggle up.

"By God--it's Abnegation!" cries Tressady. "'Tis my comrade Mings!
Look to the prisoner, ye dogs--you Tom Purdy! I'm for Abnegation!"
And off he went at a run. At his going was mighty talk and discussion
what they should do, some men being for stealing away in the boats,
others for taking to the woods, and all clean forgetting me where I
lay. But suddenly they fell silent all for Abnegation was hailing
feebly, and was come so nigh that we might see him, his face all
bloody, his knees bending under him with weakness as he stumbled on.
Suddenly, beholding Tressady, he stopped and hailed him in wild,
gasping voice:

"Roger--O Roger! The devil's aboard us, Roger--Penfeather's on
us--Penfeather's took the ship--I'm all that's left alive! They killed
Sol first--did ye--hear him die, Roger? O did ye hear--"

I saw him fall and Tressady run to lift him, and watched these pirate
rogues as, with oaths and cries of dismay, they hasted hither to throng
about the two; then, rolling into the nearest shadow I struggled to my
feet and found myself beneath the spreading branches of Bartlemy's
tree. And now, as I strove desperately ag