and commanded them to row to the beach.

Kennedy saw that Barthelemy intended to land and began to tell the
negroes, with loud cries, that he was a monster who had come to conquer
their land and burn their dwellings. They must on no account permit him
to come ashore.

The shouts of the negroes showed that the pirates had succeeded in
exciting these savages against their former comrades, and the negroes
soon began to greet the boat with a shower of arrows and stones.

"So much the better," murmured Barthelemy. "Two at one blow: traitors
and negroes. To-day vengeance will reap a harvest, this is the festival
of death. Fire among them."

The guns of the boat roared, scattering death among the blacks, in whose
ranks the bombs tore wide openings, and, amid this thunder, forty men
landed in the face of ten thousand negroes.

Kennedy and his companions urged the Calabrians to a desperate defence,
and they rushed with bloodthirsty fury at the buccaneers, hurling a
cloud of arrows and lances.

Only two or three fell wounded by these missiles, the others moved
forward in close ranks, aiming at the most prominent leaders in the
negro ranks.

When the latter saw their strongest warriors, who in battle were equal
to a hundred men, fall by invisible weapons sent from a distance before
they could reach their assailants with their battle axes, they began to
retreat in confusion, left their huts and, dragging Kennedy and his men
with them, climbed a steep hill, up which they could not be followed,
and from which no efforts availed to draw them. Barthelemy, with wild
delight, walked over the battle-ground, counting the corpses. They had
all been victims of his revenge for his murdered love.

"This was blessed work," he murmured. "Hell is blacker by eight hundred
negroes."

"Captain," said Scudamore, rousing him from his reverie, "our bitterest
enemies have escaped under our eyes. There is but one way to reach and
destroy them in the place where they have sought refuge."

"What is it?"

"It would be idle for me to show you, you would not use it, but give me
authority to do as I please for half an hour and I promise to bring you
the heads of all these traitors without sacrificing one of our men."

"I should like to see that."

"You will hear it. You need not witness it; it is a stratagem of war
which you could not learn from me. Go back to the ship and wait for my
return."

This bold language surprised Barthelemy. A sort