eet lashed together and their arms tied behind them. At the far
end of the cabin, abaft the table, and crouching on the floor, huddled a
number of ladies and children in their night-dresses, all of them pale
as death and looking dreadfully frightened, whilst one of the ladies was
weeping hysterically over a little chubby, fair, and curly-headed boy of
some six or seven years old, who was moaning piteously the while the
blood trickled from a wound in his head, matting his golden curls
together into a gory mass and slowly spreading out in a great
ensanguined stain on the sleeve of his mother's night-dress. Near the
door by which I entered lay the apparently dead bodies of two men, who I
took, from their dress, to be the captain and chief mate of the ship;
and close to them stood a tall, handsome, dark-skinned Frenchman, with
gold rings in his ears, a naval cap with a gold band on his head, a
crimson silk sash round his waist, fairly bristling with pistols, a
drawn sword in his right hand and a pistol in his left, evidently
mounting guard over the prisoners. As I entered the cabin this fellow
turned to meet me. The moment he saw me to be a stranger up went his
pistol, and, before I had time to realise what he was about, there was a
flash, a blow followed by a sharp stinging sensation along the left side
of my head, a thud, a groan, and a fall behind me; then came a lunging
thrust from his sword, which I had the good luck to parry; this parry I
followed up with a lightning-like thrust; my sword passed through his
heart, and he fell dead on the carpet close to the two bodies I have
already mentioned. All this passed as it were in a moment, with such
startling suddenness, indeed, that it left me quite dazed, so that for a
few seconds I could scarcely realise exactly what had happened. On
recovering my self-possession, my first thought was for the man who had
been following me into the cabin. I turned round to ascertain whether
the groan had proceeded from him, and there, prone in the passage-way
behind me, lay the poor fellow on his back, stone dead, the bullet
having crashed into his brain through his right eye.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

AN UNEXPECTED MEETING.

As the man was dead, it was useless to trouble further about him,
especially as there were so many of the living to be attended to; I
therefore turned again toward the occupants of the cabin and said:
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am very pleased to be able to ass