These orders were rapidly obeyed, and preparations made to throw the brig in the wind. While one man hastily got the lantern from a little round house, in which certain stores and tools were kept on deck, Ned Carlton pulled off his shirt, and was in the act of binding it to the signal halyards, when the Spaniard, whose quick ears detected some commotion, sprang on deck, armed as usual.
On seeing Carlton busy with the halyards, he looked round, caught sight of the ship, which was running with the white foam boiling under her forefoot, and thus in a moment divined what we were about.
Muttering a terrible imprecation in Spanish, he fired at Carlton, but missed him as before, and shot dead a poor apprentice who was close by.
"'Tarnal thunder, flesh and blood can't bear this!" shouted Tom Lambourne, whose fury was boundless, and who snatched up a capstan-bar. "Bear down on him all hands: there is neither sea law nor land law can help us here!"
Snatching whatever came nearest to hand, we all rushed upon the Cubano, who stood boldly at bay, and keeping the binnacle between us and him, fired over it five or six shots from his revolver with terrible rapidity; but so unsteady had his hand become in consequence of his free potations below, that every bullet missed, though one cut the knuckles of Tom Lambourne's right hand, and another tore away the rim of my straw hat.
He drew a second revolver from his sash, but Lambourne, by one lucky blow with the capstan-bar, knocked it out of his hand. It went twenty feet into the air, and fell overboard.
Quick as lightning, Antonio placed the other in his breast, drew his knife, stooped his head, and darting through us like an eel, gave Carlton a gash in the thigh as he passed.
He then made for the main-rigging, and sprang on the bulwark, no doubt with the intention of running up aloft to some secure perch, where he might reload his remaining pistol, and shoot us all down at leisure; but he missed his hold of the rattlins, and fell overboard!
"The sea will rob the gallows of its due!" said Carlton; "but he'll be shark's meat, any way."
But Antonio was not gone yet, for in falling he caught one of the lower studding-sail booms, and clutched it with deadly tenacity, for he knew that if once he was fairly launched into the ocean his fate would be sealed.