Page:The Iron Pirate 1905.djvu/195

Rh passing to death. Or I would live again through the night when Martin Hall died, and from the boat where I watched the holocaust, I climbed to the shrouds of the cutter, and stood with my poor friend in the very shelter of the spreading flames. Or I struggled with Black, having hunted him to his own quarter-deck, and there with great force of men I sought to lay hands on him; but he escaped me with a mocking laugh, and when I looked again the deck was empty.

For short moments the delirium must have left me. Once I opened my eyes, and knew that the sun shone upon me, and that the breeze which cooled my forehead blew from the sea; but my fatigue was so great that I fell asleep in the next instant, and enjoyed pure rest during many hours. When I regained consciousness for the second time, it was because rain beat upon my face, a drizzling warm rain of late summer, and there was spray from a fresh sea. For some minutes I set myself to ask where I was; but I knew that I was bound at the left hand and at my feet, and, to my unutterable astonishment, when I raised my head, I saw that I lay in an open boat which was moving very slowly, but my feet were towards the stern of it, and, as my head lay below the level of the gunwale, I could see nothing of the power which moved the boat or of the scene about us.

It was a long time before my throbbing head let me put together a chain of thought to account