had set double watches and prepared
himself for some attack from the pirates, otherwise the _Yankee_ would
certainly have been lost. As it was, the surprise was so overwhelming
that the pirates, who had been concealed in the large whaleboat that
had come alongside, were not only able to gain a foothold upon the
deck, but for a time it seemed as though they would drive the crew of
the brig below the hatches.

But as Mainwaring, streaming with blood, rushed out upon the deck, the
pirates became immediately aware that their own captain must have
been overpowered, and in an instant their desperate energy began to
evaporate. One or two jumped overboard; one, who seemed to be the
mate, fell dead from a pistol shot, and then, in the turn of a hand,
there was a rush of a retreat and a vision of leaping forms in the
dusky light of the lanthorns and a sound of splashing in the water
below.

The crew of the _Yankee_ continued firing at the phosphorescent wakes
of the swimming bodies, but whether with effect it was impossible at
the time to tell.

IV

The pirate captain did not die immediately. He lingered for three or
four days, now and then unconscious, now and then semi-conscious, but
always deliriously wandering. All the while he thus lay dying, the
mulatto woman, with whom he lived in this part of his extraordinary
dual existence, nursed and cared for him with such rude attentions as
the surroundings afforded. In the wanderings of his mind the same
duality of life followed him. Now and then he would appear the calm,
sober, self-contained, well-ordered member of a peaceful society that
his friends in his far-away home knew him to be; at other times the
nether part of his nature would leap up into life like a wild beast,
furious and gnashing. At the one time he talked evenly and clearly of
peaceful things; at the other time he blasphemed and hooted with fury.

Several times Mainwaring, though racked by his own wounds, sat beside
the dying man through the silent watches of the tropical nights.
Oftentimes upon these occasions as he looked at the thin, lean face
babbling and talking so aimlessly, he wondered what it all meant.
Could it have been madness--madness in which the separate entities of
good and bad each had, in its turn, a perfect and distinct existence?
He chose to think that this was the case. Who, within his inner
consciousness, does not feel that same ferine, savage man struggling
against the stern, adamantin