east I should
be doing as Marjorie would have me do, and in either of these cases we
could despatch Jensen and have up our barricade again before help would
come to him. All this takes time to tell, but took no time in the
thinking, and my finger was upon the trigger when, in the providence of
God, something happened which altered every purpose--Jensen's and the
others', and mine. There came a great crash through the air loud as
immediate thunder, with a noise that seemed to shake heaven above and
earth below us. Every one of us in that narrow place knew it for the
roar of a ship's gun.

CHAPTER XXXII

THE SEA GIVES UP ITS QUICK

The clatter of that reverberation altered in a trice the whole
conditions of our game. Jensen, in his surprise, looked up for a moment,
and in that moment I had flung myself upon him, and his pistol, going
off, spent its bullet harmlessly in the skies. In another second he had
knocked me to the ground with a force that nearly stunned me; but before
he could use another weapon twenty hands were upon him, and twenty
weapons would have ended him but for Lancelot's command to take him
alive. In a trice we had flung our door in its place and swung the beam
across, and there we were, none the worse for our adventure, with the
chief of our enemies fast prisoner in our hands. Already the pirates
were scouring back into the woods, and though certain of our men had the
presence of mind to empty their muskets after them, and bring down the
two rogues who had carried the sham Ebrow to us, most of us were
occupied in peering through the loopholes on the other side of the
fortress at a blessed sight. Not half a mile away rode the ship that had
fired the shot; the smoke of the discharge was still in the air about
her. She was a frigate, and she flew the Dutch flag.

You may imagine with what a rapture we saw that frigate and that flag.
It could only mean succour, and we were sick at heart to think that we
had no flag with us to fly in answer. But we waited and watched with
beating hearts behind our walls, and presently we could see that a boat
was lowered and that men came over the side and filled it, and then it
began to make for Fair Island as fast as stroke of oar could carry it.
With a cry of joy Lancelot thrust his spy-glass into my hand, crying out
to me that Captain Amber was on board the boat. And so indeed he was,
for I had no sooner clapped the glass to my eye than there I saw him,
sitt