d struck down Morrell; and Mark smote this man in the
body, and when he doubled, wrenched the great club from his hands. He
swung this, leaped to meet the harpooner.

They came together in mid-deck. The great handspike whistled through the
air, and down. An egg-shell crunched beneath a heel.... Silva dropped.

Mark stood for an instant above him; and in that instant, every man saw
the harpoon which Silva had driven home. Its heavy shaft hung, dragging
on the deck; it hung from Mark's breast, high in the right shoulder; and
the point stood out six inches behind his shoulder blade. It seemed to
drag at him; he bent slowly beneath its weight, and drooped, and lay at
last across the body of the man whose skull the handspike had crushed.

There were, at that moment, about a dozen of the men still on their feet;
but in the instant of their paralyzed dismay, two things struck them; two
furies ... Dick Morrell, tottering on unsteady feet, brandishing a
razor-tipped lance full ten feet long. He came upon the men from the
flank, shouting; and Joel, when he saw his brother fall, left his shelter
in the galley door and swept upon them. The fat cook, with the knife,
fought nobly at his side.

The men broke; they fled headlong, forward; and Joel and Morrell and the
cook pursued them, through the waist, past the trypots, till they tumbled
down the fo'c's'le scuttle and huddled in their bunks and howled....

A dozen limp bodies sprawled upon the deck, bodies of moaning men with
heads that would ache and pound for days.... Joel left Morrell to guard
the fo'c's'le, and went back among them, going swiftly from man to
man....

Silva was dead. The others would not die--save only Mark. The iron had
pierced his chest, had ripped a lung....

XVIII

He died that night, smiling to the last. He was able to speak, now and
then, before the end; and Joel and Priss were near him, at his side,
soothing him, listening....

He asked Joel, once: "Shall I tell you--where--pearls..."

Joel shook his head. "I do not want them," he said. "They have enough
blood to turn them crimson. Let them lie."

And Mark smiled, and nodded faintly. "Right, boy. Let them lie...." And
his eyes shone up at them; and he whispered presently: "That was--a fight
to tell about, Joel...."

In those hours beside Mark, Priss completed the transition from girl to
woman. She was very sober, and quiet; but she did not weep, and she
answered Mark's smiles. And Mark