med. Then the gun came roaring down at them but they ducked
behind the mast or stepped watchfully aside. Men condemned to death are
not apt to lose their wits in the face of one more peril.

These pikes were ashen shafts with long steel points and the merchant
seamen had been trained to use them. And the brawn of these lads made
the pike a match for a pirate's cutlass. Ned Rackham bounded forward to
swing at the broad, deep-chested boatswain. A wondrous pair of
antagonists they were, in the prime of their youth and vigor. The
pirate's cutlass bit clean through the pike shaft as the boatswain
parried the blow but the apple-cheeked Devonshire man closed in and
wrapped his arms around his foe. They went to the deck clutching for
each other's throats and the fight trampled over them.

Meanwhile Joe Hawkridge and Jack Cockrell, unwilling to twiddle their
thumbs, had rushed aft as fast as their legs could carry them. It was a
mutual impulse, to release such of the men passengers as might have a
stomach for fighting and also the ship's officers. Into the doorway
which led from the waist, the two lads dived and scurried through the
main cabin now clear of pirates. Locked doors they smashed with a
broadaxe found in the small-arms chest and so entered all the rooms.

The women passengers were almost dead with suffering, what with the
turbulence of the storm and the wild riot on deck. The lads pitied them
but had no time to console. Several of the men, merchants and planters
of some physical hardihood, begged for weapons and Joe Hawkridge bade
them help themselves from the spare arms which the pirates had left in
the great cabin. In another little room the boys found the mates,
steward, surgeon, and gunner of the _Plymouth Adventure_ and you may be
sure that they came boiling out with a raging thirst for strife.

"Harkee, Jack," said Joe before they climbed to the poop deck, "if the
pirates are driven aft, as I expect, they will make a last stand in this
cabin house which is like a fort. These 'fenseless women must be hidden
safe from harm. Do you coax 'em into the lazarette."

This was a room on the deck below, in the very stern of the ship where
were kept the extra sails and coils of rope and various stores. It was
the surest shelter against harm in such stress as this. Alas, Jack's
persuasions were vain. The frantic women were in no humor to listen, and
so the lads bundled them through the hatch as gently as possible and
fo