taking a wide sweep and
luffing up with main-topsail aback under the stern of the _Black Pearl_,
poured in a raking broadside that traversed the whole length of the
pirate's decks, leaving them a very shambles of dead and wounded.

The artillery tight did not last very long. Anxious to capture Jose
Leirya alive, Cavendish--perhaps not too well advisedly--laid his ship
alongside the schooner, and poured his men on to the pirate's decks.

Seeing this, the captain of the _Elizabeth_, not to be behindhand, did
the same. Ordering his men away from the guns, and forming them up, he
led them in person over the side on to the decks of the _Pearl_, which
was by this time a scene of dreadful carnage. Blood was everywhere; her
planking was so slimy with it that men slipped and fell in it. It ran
in little rivulets from the scuppers.

Roger, who followed close upon the heels of the captain, thought
involuntarily of William Evans's description of how Jose Leirya had
captured this very vessel, cutting her out from under San Juan fort in
Puerto Rico; and his tale of how freely the blood flowed on these same
decks then.

But he had no time for mere thought; his attention was wholly taken up
with the fighting, and the problem of how to avoid being impaled or cut
down by some furious pirate.

The villains knew that they were fighting with halters round their
necks, and laid about them like very demons from the pit. Cut and
thrust, cut and thrust, they came at the Englishmen, and, headed by Jose
himself, for several moments swept the invaders before them.

Roger was, as ever, well in the front rank of the combatants, and was
carrying himself right manfully, when he saw one of his countrymen slip
and fall in a pool of blood, losing his sword as he fell. A burly
black-bearded ruffian, whom he had been engaging, instantly set his foot
on the prostrate body, and shortened his hanger to thrust him through;
but Roger, who was engaged with another pirate, nimbly evaded the blow
aimed at him, and, with one spring, like a young leopard, was on the
would-be slayer, and, taking him before he could turn, passed his sword
through the pirate's body with such force that it penetrated to the
hilt, while both rescuer and corpse went rolling to the deck together.
Roger disencumbered himself from the dead body, and, setting his foot
upon it, pulled violently at his sword to get it free again.

Then another hand was laid over his on the hilt of