nstant.

Before I could fire, however, some one behind me shoved me aside again,
and crash came a heavy capstan bar down upon the negro's skull, which I
heard crack like a walnut shell as he dropped dead on his face.

"Golly, Mass' Hald'n," exclaimed Accra Prout, our stalwart mulatto cook,
whose sinuous arm had thus incontinently settled the dispute between my
sable opponent and myself. "I'se guess dis chile gib dat black debble
goss, noh ow!"

But ere I could say a word to him for his timely aid, Accra Prout had
bounded onward in front, and I then saw he was following Colonel
Vereker, who had managed somehow or other, in spite of his lameness, to
gain the deck of his old ship along with the rest of us.

Crack, crack, crack, went his revolver with venomous iteration from the
other side of the vessel, where he was standing by the bulwarks, close
to the hatchway of the companion-ladder leading to the cabin below,
which he was apparently endeavouring to reach, while a crowd of Haytians
barred his further progress towards those imprisoned in the cabin, whom
they thus prevented his releasing, a fresh foe starting up for every one
he disposed of, and a rough and terrible fight going on all round him
all the time.

"'Top a minnit, Mass' V'reker!" shouted Accra Prout, darting into the
middle of the throng, clearing a pathway for himself with the capstan
bar. "I'se here; I'se come help you soon!"

"A thousand devils!" hissed a tall black near by--a man with a large,
crinkly, ink-black moustache, and certainly with the most satanic visage
I had ever beheld before. "A thousand devils!" repeated he, giving him
a thrust with a large knife that pierced poor Accra's arm, and making
him drop the capstan bar. "Take care of yourself--beast!"

A cry from the colonel told me who this was.

"Ah, villain, villain!" he sang out, looking him full in the face and
grinding his teeth and trying with all his might, but vainly, to get at
him through the press of struggling figures by whom he was surrounded.
"I've been looking for you, _Marquis des Coupgorges_!"

The black scoundrel gave out a shrill laugh like that of a hyena, as
Colonel Vereker had described it to us when telling his yarn.

"Pardon me, sir, I am here," he yelled out mockingly. "I am here. I do
not run away like your white trash! Why don't you come and fight me?
Bah! I spit on you, my fine plantation colonel. When I get at you I
will serve you just as I did your