demoniacal
figures seemed upon us even while we said that the seas were clear.
Whirling their knives, yelling one to the other, some slipping on the
slimy weed, others, more sure in foothold, making for the turret's
height, the mutineers fell upon us like a hurricane and so beat us down
that my heart sank away from me, and I said that the house was lost and
little Ruth Bellenden their prey at last.

"Stand by the gun--by the gun to the last, if you love your life!" I
cried to Dolly Venn. "Do you, Peter, old comrade, follow me; I am going
to clear the rock. You will help me to do that, Peter?"

"Help you, captain! Aye," roared he, "if it was the ould divil himself
in a travelling caravan, I'd help you!"

He swung his rifle by the barrel as he spoke the words and, bringing it
down crash, he cleaved the skull of a great ruffian whose face was
already glowering down from the turret's rim. Nothing, I swear, in all
that night was more wonderful than the _sang-froid_ of this great
Irishman (as he would call himself in fighting moods) or the merry
words which he could find for us even then in the very crisis of it,
when hope seemed gone and the worst upon us. For Peter knew well what I
was about when I leapt from the turret and charged down upon the
mutineers. A dozen men, perchance, had gained foothold on the rock. We
must drive them back, he said, stand face to face with them, let the
odds be what they might.

"God strengthen my arm this hour and show me the bald places!" cries
he, leaping to the ground and whirling his musket like a demon. Seth
Barker, do not doubt, was on his heels--trust the carpenter to be where
danger was! I could hear him grunting even above that awful din. He
fought like ten, and wherever he swung his musket there he left death
behind him.

So follow us as we leap from the turret, and hurl ourselves upon that
astonished crew. Black as the place was, tremulous the light,
nevertheless the cabined space, the open plateau, was our salvation. I
saw figures before me; faces seemed to look into my own; and as a
battle-axe of old time, so my rifle's butt would fall upon them. Heaven
knows I had the strength of three and I used it with three's agility,
now shooting them down, now hitting wildly, thrust here, thrust there,
bullets singing about my ears, haunting cries everywhere. Aye, how they
went under! What music it was, those crashing blows upon head and
breast, the loud report, the gurgling death-ratt