Haul him alongside o me, wilta? I'll set on him--ease my old stumps!"

He lowered himself.

"I'll larn him shoot me," he said, arranging himself comfortably on his corpse.

Kit giggled. Somehow this old man with the twinkle in his eye made him feel at home among these screaming horrors.

"Lucky shot o Lanyon's," continued old Ding-dong. "There's a lot o luck in fightin; and good job for us too. Luck's the favour o G.o.d.

He always favours us. We're straight, ye see."

He peered through the eddying smoke-drift.

"That there top-hamper o their'n makes a tidy bridge atween ships.

Now if they was to tumble to that, reckon they'd boord--and we'd be about done."

Kit looked round.

The enemy's main-top had fallen across the deck of the sloop.

The lightning that is genius flashed in the boy's mind.

In a second he was across the self-fashioned drawbridge between the two ships and on to the deck of the Frenchman. It was deserted save for the dead men, red-coats all, flung from the falling top, and sprawling broadcast everywhere. Even Mouche had disappeared.

Beneath him on the lower deck was the same bellowing Inferno as on the _Tremendous_. He felt the privateer stagger and rend to a broadside of the sloop, as though her bowels were being torn out. He rushed to a hatchway belching smoke. In the pit below he could see dim figures flitting about, and could hear the howls of those in torment.

Deafened, blinded, dizzied, he slammed the hatch upon them, clamping it down. Swiftly he pa.s.sed from hatchway to hatchway, making all fast.

With dancing heart, he ran back to the bridge.

As he did so a whimpering voice stayed him.

"O mon enfant!"

The French skipper was lying abaft the binnacle, a yard across his lower body.

There was no make-believe about him now, no mockery. He was naked man, stripped of his tinsel, and laid bare to the soul by the inexorable Master, Pain. Across his chin, as though to mock him, lay his false moustachios.

"Tuez-moi!" he whimpered hoa.r.s.ely. "Tuez-moi!"

"I can't!" gasped Kit--"not in cold blood!"

The lad was face to face with one of the most appalling of G.o.d's mysteries, and was unhinged by it. Gwen with the toothache had been nothing to this.

The agonised man rolled his head from side to side.

"Sainte Mere de Dieu, intercedez pour moi!" he wailed.

Again that lightning flashed in the boy's mind.

The man's silver-mounted pistol lay on the deck beside him. He thrust it into the other's hand.

"Here, sir!"

The man clutched it, as one dying in a desert may clutch the flagon of water that means life to him.

The head ceased its dreadful weaving.

"Pet.i.t ange! pet.i.t Anglais!" he whispered, and tried to smile.

Kit ran for his bridge. Halfway across it, he heard a crack, and looked back.

He could not see the French skipper; but what he could see made his heart sick.

Boats, crammed to the teeth, were putting away from the _Coquette_. Black and scurrying, they tore across the water towards him, like rats racing for blood.

CHAPTER XII

BOARDERS

I

Kit rushed madly aft.

"Here they come, sir!" he screamed.

Old Ding-dong sat propped on his corpse, shaving a quid of tobacco.

"Who come?"

"The boats, sir--boarding."

"That's the game, is it?"

He shut his jack-knife deliberately, and arranged his plug in the corner of his jaw.

"Fetch me that ere boardin-pike. Now give me a hike up. Then nip below and pa.s.s the word to Mr. Lanyon."

As Kit turned, he heard the rip of the first boat under the counter of the sloop and a sharp command in French, sounding strange and terrible in his ears.

Furiously he sped along the deck. As he bundled down the ladder, he caught a glimpse of the old Commander, braced against the bulwarks, and spitting into his hands.

The boy dropped into h.e.l.l.

Down there was no order. All was howling chaos. Each gun-captain fought his own gun, regardless of the rest. Billows of smoke drifted to and fro; shadowy forms flitted; guns bounded and bellowed; here and there a red glare lit the fog.