With a fearful grinding of timbers and rattling of spars, the merchantman's larboard bow scraped along the enemy's side. Boarding-irons were thrown across from the forecastle-deck. With a yell, the men of Devon sprang from rail to rail, and hurled themselves upon the mongrels who clustered to repulse them. Cutlasses skirred in the air; and some struck clanging metal, and some met with a softer resistance. Screams of rage and pain, and shouts of grim exultation, rang above the conflict.

Old Trowley hacked a place for himself in the thickest of the press, and laid about him with such desperate fury and such fearful oaths that the buccaneers hustled each other to get out of his way.

Kingswell, in the waist of the Cristobal, encountered D'Antons, and claimed him for his own. As their blades rasped together, D'Antons began the story of Sir Ralph Westleigh's death in the wilderness. Kingswell heard it without comment. The tumult about them gradually subsided, as man after man of the pirate crew was cut down or bound. Sail was shortened on both vessels, and the victors, sound and wounded alike, gathered about the two swordsmen. A strained silence took possession of the watchers. The rough fellows understood that their captain had an old score to settle with the buccaneer. They were fascinated by the lightning play of the rapiers. They noted every movement of foot and hand, blade and eye. When D'Antons snarled an insulting taunt at his adversary, they cursed softly. When their captain pricked the pirate's shoulder, a husky murmur of admiration went through them. So intent were they on the fight that they failed to notice the approach of Miwandi, the Beothic woman, until she was in their midst. But they became aware of her presence when she screamed with rage and flung herself upon Kingswell.

"Pull the wench off," they cried, and made a futile grab at the mad figure.

Kingswell, quick as a cat for all his Saxon colouring, wrenched himself clear of her, avoided the slash of her knife by a half-inch, and lunged through D'Antons' guard. The buccaneer pitched forward so suddenly and heavily that the rapier was wrenched from the Englishman's hand. The hilt struck the deck. The slim blade darted out between D'Antons' shoulders a full two-thirds of its length. He sprawled on his face, gulping his last breath; and the hilt of Kingswell's weapon knocked spasmodically on the red planking of the deck. The woman, stunned with grief, was led away by two of the seamen.

By the time the duel was over, the long, northern twilight was drawing to a close. The decks of the Cristobal were cleared of the dead bodies and the wreckage of guns and spars. The torn rigging was partially repaired; a few sails were set; and the shattered tiller was replaced. The prisoners (wounded and bound together, they did not number a dozen) were divided between the ships. A prize-crew of seven, under the first mate's command, went aboard the Cristobal. Then the boarding-irons were cast loose, and the vessels fell away from each other to a safe distance.

Miwandi's grief was desperate. Beatrix strove to comfort her, but failed signally. Her position was evident enough to every one who had seen her frantic attempt to assist D'Antons in the encounter with Kingswell. Beatrix guessed the story. Her face burned at remembrance of her one-time companionship with D'Antons—of the days before she fully knew his nature, and often sat at cards and chess with him in the little cabin in the wilderness—and of the days before that, when he was one of her admirers in London. Even now she did not know him for her father's murderer. Kingswell had decided to keep that to himself, until some day in the happy future, when the wilderness should be fainter than the memory of a dream in his wife's mind.

For three days the ships kept within sight of each other. On the fourth, a gale of wind drove them apart; but Kingswell felt no anxiety for the prize, for she had received no serious damage to her hull in the bitter encounter that had befallen on his wedding-day.

Aboard the Heart of the West the wounded improved daily; the prisoners cursed their irons and their luck; the crew never pulled on a rope without a song to lighten the task; old Trowley, promoted from imprisonment to the position of second mate, worked like a Trojan, and Beatrix and Bernard sped the hours in the high and golden atmosphere of love and youth. The Beothic woman, however, felt no response in her heart to the stir and happiness about her. Her world had fallen in a desolation of emptiness, and her very soul was weary of the sequence of day and night, night and day. She would not eat. She sobbed quietly, without rest, in her darkened berth. Her ears were deaf to words of comfort, even when they were spoken in her own language by Ouenwa. She asked no questions. Ever since that first outbreak, at sight of her lover's danger, she accepted the will of her pitiless gods without signs of either anger or wonder.

One still night, when the waves rocked under the faint light of the stars without any breaking of foam, and the wind was just sufficient to swell the sails from the yards, the man at the tiller was startled from his reveries by a splash close alongside. He called to the officer of the watch, who had heard nothing, and told him of the sound. They scanned the sea on all sides and listened intently. They saw only the black, vanishing crests. They heard only the whispering of the ship on her way.

"A fish," said the mate. The other agreed with him.

In the morning Miwandi's berth was discovered to be empty,—no trace of her was found alow or aloft.

The remaining days of the passage slipped by without any especial incident. Winds served. Seas were considerate of the good ship's safety. No fogs endangered the young lovers' homeward voyage. Every night there was fiddling in the forecastle and the chanting of rude ballads. And sometimes in the cabin a violin sang and sang, as if the very heart of happiness were under the sounding-board, and Love himself in the strings.