elmsman, and, striking him
to the deck with one blow of his huge fist, himself seized the
wheel. Before the pirates could draw breath he had jammed the helm to
starboard, and the reef lay right across our bows.

A dreadful cry went up from that black ship to a deaf Heaven,--a cry
that was echoed by a wild shout of triumph from the merchantman. The
mass fronting us broke in terror and rage and confusion. Some ran
frantically up and down with shrieks and curses; others sprang
overboard. A few made a dash for the poop and for us who stood to meet
them. They were led by the Spaniard and the gravedigger. The former I
met and sent tumbling back into the waist; the latter whirled past me,
and rushing upon Paradise thrust him through with a pike, then dashed on
to the wheel, to be met and hewn down by Diccon.

The ship struck. I put my arm around my wife, and my hand before her
eyes; and while I looked only at her, in that storm of terrible cries,
of flapping canvas, rushing water, and crashing timbers, the Spaniard
clambered like a catamount upon the poop, that was now high above the
broken forepart of the ship, and fired his pistol at me point-blank.

CHAPTER XXV IN WHICH MY LORD HATH HIS DAY

I AND Black Lamoral were leading a forlorn hope. With all my old company
behind us, we were thundering upon an enemy as thick as ants, covering
the face of the earth. Down came Black Lamoral, and the hoofs of every
mad charger went over me. For a time I was dead; then I lived again, and
was walking with the forester's daughter in the green chase at home. The
oaks stretched broad sheltering arms above the young fern and the little
wild flowers, and the deer turned and looked at us. In the open spaces,
starring the lush grass, were all the yellow primroses that ever
bloomed. I gathered them for her, but when I would have given them to
her she was no longer the forester's daughter, but a proud lady,
heiress to lands and gold, the ward of the King. She would not take the
primroses from a poor gentleman, but shook her head and laughed sweetly,
and faded into a waterfall that leaped from a pink hill into a waveless
sea. Another darkness, and I was captive to the Chickahominies, tied to
the stake. My arm and shoulder were on fire, and Opechancanough came and
looked at me, with his dark, still face and his burning eyes. The fierce
pain died, and I with it, and I lay in a grave and listened to the loud
and deep murmur of the forest abov