“See him now!” cried Tom Packer.  “Now, when I could cut him out!  Gill!  Did I tell you to mark my words?”

I implored Tom Packer in the Lord’s name, as well as I could in my faintness, to go to the Sergeant’s aid.

“I hate and detest him,” says Tom, moodily wavering.  “Still, he is a brave man.”  Then he calls out, “Sergeant Drooce, Sergeant Drooce!  Tell me you have driven me too hard, and are sorry for it.”

The Sergeant, without turning his eyes from his assailants, which would have been instant death to him, answers.

“No.  I won’t.”

“Sergeant Drooce!” cries Tom, in a kind of an agony.  “I have passed my word that I would never save you from Death, if I could, but would leave you to die.  Tell me you have driven me too hard and are sorry for it, and that shall go for nothing.”

One of the group laid the Sergeant’s bald bare head open.  The Sergeant laid him dead.

“I tell you,” says the Sergeant, breathing a little short, and waiting for the next attack, “no.  I won’t.  If you are not man enough to strike for a fellow-soldier because he wants help, and because of nothing else, I’ll go into the other world and look for a better man.”

Tom swept upon them, and cut him out.  Tom and he fought their way through another knot of them, and sent them flying, and came over to where I was beginning again to feel, with inexpressible joy, that I had got a sword in my hand.

They had hardly come to us, when I heard, above all the other noises, a tremendous cry of women’s voices.  I also saw Miss Maryon, with quite a new face, suddenly clap her two hands over Mrs. Fisher’s eyes.  I looked towards the silver-house, and saw Mrs. Venning—­standing upright on the top of the steps of the trench, with her gray hair and her dark eyes—­hide her daughter’s child behind her, among the folds of her dress, strike a pirate with her other hand, and fall, shot by his pistol.

The cry arose again, and there was a terrible and confusing rush of the women into the midst of the struggle.  In another moment, something came tumbling down upon me that I thought was the wall.  It was a heap of Sambos who had come over the wall; and of four men who clung to my legs like serpents, one who clung to my right leg was Christian George King.

“Yup, So-Jeer,” says he, “Christian George King sar berry glad So-Jeer a prisoner.  Christian George King been waiting for So-Jeer sech long time.  Yup, yup!”

What could I do, with five-and-twenty of them on me, but be tied hand and foot?  So, I was tied hand and foot.  It was all over now—­boats not come back—­all lost!  When I was fast bound and was put up against the wall, the one-eyed English convict came up with the Portuguese Captain, to have a look at me.

“See!” says he.  “Here’s the determined man!  If you had slept sounder, last night, you’d have slept your soundest last night, my determined man.”