The Beautiful White Devil. Boothby Guy
I felt something touch my throat. I lifted my head, and at the same instant the truth dawned upon me. I was being strangled. How long a time elapsed between the cord's touching my neck and my losing consciousness I could not say, but brief as was the interval, I can recollect seeing my companion half raise himself. Then came a flash, a loud report, a sudden singing in my ears, and I remember no more.
When I recovered my wits again my companion was bending over me.
"Thank God," he said piously, "I began to think the brute had done for you. Now pull yourself together as fast as you can, for there's going to be serious trouble."
I looked round me as well as I could. By my side lay the body of the man, with the cord still in his hand, and from the way in which one arm was stretched out and the other doubled under him, I gathered that he was dead. Amidships the crew of the junk were assembled, listening to the excited oratory of the little pock-marked devil against whom my companion had warned me. He held in his hand a revolver – mine, I had no difficulty in guessing – and, from the way in which he turned and pointed in our direction, I understood that he was explaining to the others the necessity which existed for exterminating us without delay. I turned to my companion and warmly thanked him for the shot that had saved my life.
"Don't mention it," he answered coolly. "It was fortunate I saw him coming. You must remember that besides saving you it has put one of our adversaries out of the way, and every one against odds like this counts. By the way, you'd better find something to lay about you with – for from all appearance we're in for a big thing."
Under the bulwarks, and a little to the left of where I sat, was a stout iron bar some two feet six in length. I managed to secure it, and having done so, felt a little easier in my mind.
As I crawled back to my station another report greeted my ears, and at the same instant a bullet bedded itself in the woodwork, within an inch of my left temple.
"That's the introduction," said my imperturbable friend with a grim smile. "Are you ready? He's got the only weapon among them and five more cartridges left in it. Keep by me and give no quarter – for remember if they win they'll show you none."
Bang! Another bullet whizzed past my ear.
Bang! My companion gave a low whistle and then turned to me.
"Grazed my forearm," he said calmly, and then raising his pistol shot the nearest of our assailants dead. The man gave a little cry, more like a sob, and with outspread arms fell on his face upon the deck. The next roll of the vessel carried him into the lee scuppers, where for some time he washed idly to and fro. Never in my life before had I seen anything so coolly deliberate as the way in which he was picked off. It was more like rabbit shooting than anything else.
"Two cartridges gone!" said my comrade.
As he spoke a bullet tore up the deck at my feet, while another grazed my right shoulder.
"Four. Keep steady; he's only two left. Look out then, for they'll rush us to a certainty! I wish I could get another shot at them first."
But this wish was not destined to be gratified. The scoundrels had had sufficient evidence of his skill as a marksman, and being prudent, though precious, villains they had no desire to receive further proof of it. They therefore kept in shelter.
Minute after minute went slowly by, and everyone found the night drawing further off the sky, and the light widening more perceptibly. But still no sign came from those in hiding forrard. To my mind this watching and waiting was the worst part of the whole business. All sorts of fresh horrors seemed to cluster round our position as we crouched together in the shelter aft.
Suddenly, without any warning, and with greater majesty than I ever remember to have observed in him before or since, the sun rose in the cloudless sky. Instantly with his coming, light and colour shot across the waters, the waves from being of a dull leaden hue became green and foam-crested, and the great fibre sails of the junk from figuring as blears of double darkness, reaching up to the very clouds, took to themselves again their ordinary commonplace and forlorn appearance.
Our course lay due east, and for this reason the sun shone directly in our faces, dazzling us, and for the moment preventing our seeing anything that might be occurring forrard. I could tell that this was a matter of some concern to my companion, and certainly it was not to remain very long a matter of indifference to me.
The sun had been above the sky line scarcely a matter of two minutes when another shot was fired from forward, and I fell with a cry to the deck. Next moment I had picked myself up again, and, feeling very sick and giddy, scrambled to my companion's side. He was as cool and apparently as unconcerned as ever.
"The other was the prologue – this is going to be the play itself. Keep as close to me as you can, and above all things fight to the death – accept no quarter, and give none."
The words were hardly out of his mouth before we heard a scampering of bare feet upon the deck, and a succession of shrill yells, and then the vessel paying off a little on her course showed us the ruffians climbing on to the raised poop upon which we stood. To my horror – for, strangely enough, in that moment of intense excitement, I was capable of a second emotion – I saw that they were six in number, while a reinforcement, numbering three more, waited upon the fo'c's'le head to watch the turn of events.
As the head of the first man appeared my companion raised his pistol and pulled the trigger. The bullet struck the poor wretch exactly on the bridge of the nose, making a clear round hole from which, an instant later, a jet of blood spurted forth. A second bullet carried another man to his account, and by this time the remaining four were upon us.
Of what followed in that turmoil I have but a very imperfect recollection. I remember seeing three men rush towards me, one of whom I knew for Kwong Fung, the little pock-marked rascal before mentioned, and I recollect that, with the instinct of despair, I clutched my bar of iron in both hands and brought it down on the head of the nearest of the trio with all my force. It caught him on the right temple, and crushed the skull in like a broken egg-shell. But the piratical scoundrels had forgotten the man lying on the deck. In their haste to advance they omitted to step over his body, caught their feet and fell to the ground. At least, I am wrong in saying they fell to the ground, for only the pock-marked rascal fell; the other tripped, and would have recovered himself and been upon me had I not sprung upon him, thrown away my bar, caught up his companion's knife, which had fallen from his hand, and tried my level best to drive it in above his shoulder-blade. But it was easier said than done. He clutched me fiercely and, locked hard and fast, we swayed this way and that, fighting like wild-cats for our lives. He was a smaller man than I, but active as an acrobat, and in the most perfect training. Up and down, round and round we went, eyes glaring, breath coming in great gasps, our hands upon each other's throats, and every moment drawing closer and closer to the vessel's side.
Though the whole fight could not have lasted a minute it seemed an eternity. I was beginning to weaken, and I saw by the look in his hateful almond eyes that my antagonist knew it. But he had bargained without his host. A heavy roll sent the little vessel heeling over to the port side, and an instant later we were both prone upon the deck rolling, tumbling, fighting again to be uppermost. From the manner in which I had fallen, however, the advantage now lay with me, and you may be sure I was not slow to make the most of it. Throwing myself over and seating myself astride of him, I clutched my adversary by the throat, and, drawing back my arm, struck him with my clenched fist between his eyes. The blow was given with all my strength, and it certainly told. He lay beneath me a bleeding and insensible mass. Then staggering to my feet I looked about me. On the deck were four dead bodies; two on the break of the poop lying faces down, just where they had fallen, one at my feet, his skull dashed in and his brains protruding, a horrible sight, – another under the bulwarks, his limbs twitching in his death agony, and his mouth vomiting blood with automatic regularity. My companion I discovered seated astride of another individual, admonishing him with what I knew was an empty revolver to abstain from any further attempt to escape.
"I think we have got the upper hand of them now," he said as calmly as if he were accustomed to going through this sort of thing every day of his life. "Would you be so good as to hand me that piece of rope? I must make this slippery gentleman fast while I have him."
"Surely