"Oh God!" he said, involuntarily, "that I should be an actor in such a scene as this. Yet my presence here has been her preservation. I will save her and protect her now, even with the life of the captain!"
"His life is already ended," said the bucanier, who, on witnessing the fate of his comrade, had quietly dropped the lifeless form of the maid where he had found her.
"Dead!" exclaimed the youth. "Then am I chief here. I will save, for her sake, all that are left alive. But she shall not know me! She shall ever be ignorant to whom she is indebted. Yet methinks I would like to send by her a message to the haughty daughter of the house of Bellamont." This was spoken with bitter irony. "But I must try to restore her."
He poured a vase of water over her forehead, and moistened her lips, and she revived.
"Where am I? What has transpired? Who--how--where--"
She glanced wildly around, and everything that had passed flashed upon her mind. She bounded from him with a deplorable cry, and covered her face with her hands. "Mercy, oh God! mercy!"
"Thou art no enemy! Bless thee for the sound of thy voice. Tell me what has happened? Where is my uncle? Oh, speak as if life hung on thy words."
"Heaven, I thank thee! And this dead body?"
"I have protected thee from a fate worse than death, with the life of this man."
"Who--who art thou? I should know that voice," she exclaimed, with returning confidence and hope, gazing upon his now swarthy and disfigured features which defeated her scrutiny, deeply shaded, too, as they were by his bonnet, which he pulled farther over his brows.
"An outcast, unworthy a thought from innocence and purity like thee."
"Yet you are my friend. How came you here?"
"I am confused, puzzled, perplexed! your voice, your air! I know not what to think or say. A pirate boarded us, and you--you are not a pirate. Oh, my uncle! my dear uncle! Heaven be thanked, you are safe!" she cried, darting forward and flinging herself into his arms as he entered the cabin, literally covered with blood, while behind him crowded a dark mass of pirates, through whom he had cut his way.
"How fares it with thee, my child?" he cried, with anxiety, pressing her to his breast.
"God bless thee! we will die together; there is no hope. Come on, ye fiends, now," he cried, turning upon his foes with one arm entwined about her, and brandishing his cutlass in the calm defiance of despair.