He was laughing--mildly. The outline of his body and the posture
and motion of his head and shoulders all showed it. Then he leaped to the
deck and we lost sight of him. Where he had mustered that horde of
slant-eyed pirates, we never stopped to wonder. We had no time for idle
questions.
I know that I, for one, finding time during the lull in the fighting to
appraise our chances, expected to die there and then. A vastly greater
force was attacking us, and we were divided as well as outnumbered. But if
we were to die, we were determined to die fighting; so with our backs to
the bulwark and with whatever weapons we had been able to snatch up in our
hands, we defended ourselves as best we could and had no more respite to
think of what was going on aft.
Only one stern gun, you remember, had been fired. Now the second spoke.
There was a yell of anguish as the ball cut through the midst of the
pirates, a tremendous crash that followed almost instantly the report of
the cannon, a sort of brooding hush, then a thunderous reverberation
compared with which all other noises of the night had been as nothing.
Tongues of flame sprang skyward and a ghastly light shot far out on the
sea.
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