side by
side, and the howling mob of pirates was swarming over the enemy's rail.
Job Howland and another man took great boat-hooks, with which they
grappled the brig's ports and kept the two vessels from drifting apart.
Jeremy was alone upon the sloop's deck. He put the thickness of the mast
between him and the hail of bullets and peered fearfully out at the
terrible scene above.

[Illustration: Dave Herriot]

The crew of the brig had been too much disorganized to repel the
boarders as well as they might, and the entire horde of wild barbarians
had scrambled to her deck, where a perfect inferno now held sway. The
air seemed full of flying cutlasses that produced an incessant hiss and
clangor. Pistols banged deafeningly at close quarters and there was the
constant undertone of groans, cries and bellowed oaths. Above the din
came the terrible, clear voice of Stede Bonnet, urging on his seadogs.
He had become a different man from the moment his foot touched the
merchantman's deck. From the cool commander he had changed to a devil
incarnate, with face distorted, eyes aflame, and a sword that hacked and
stabbed with the swift ferocity of lightning. Jeremy saw him, fighting
single-handed with three men. His long sword played in and out, to the
right and to the left with a turn and a flash, then, whirling swiftly,
pinned a man who had run up behind. Bonnet's feet moved quickly,
shifting ground as stealthily as a cat's and in a second he had leaped
to a safer position with his back to the after-house. Two of his
opponents were down, and the third fighting wearily and without
confidence, when a huge, flaxen-haired man burst from the hatch to the
deck and swung his broad cutlass to such effect that the battling groups
in his path gave way to either side. The burly form of Dave Herriot
opposed the new enemy and as the two giants squared off, sword ringing
on sword, more than one wounded sailor raised himself to a better
position, grinning with the Anglo-Saxon's unquenchable love of a fair
fight. Herriot was no mean swordsman of the rough and ready seaman's
type and had a great physique as well, but his previous labors--he had
been the first man on board and had already accounted for a fair share
of the defenders--had rendered him slow and arm-weary. The ready
parrying, blade to blade, ceased suddenly as his foot slipped backward
in a pool of blood. The blond seaman seized his advantage and swung a
slicing blow that glanced off