Page:The Iron Pirate 1905.djvu/304

290 paralysed before the sight of the carnage around him. You looked along the length of the vessel, and it was as though you looked upon the scene of a bloody battle, for there were dead almost in heaps, and wounded screaming, and streams of blood, and fragments of wreckage as though the ship had been under fire for many hours. But above all this terror, I know of nothing which struck me with such fearful sorrow as the sight of a fair young English girl lying by the door of the great saloon, her arms extended, her nut-brown hair soaked in her own blood, while a man knelt over her, and you could see his tears falling upon her dead face, and his ravings were incoherent and almost those of a maniac. At the sight of us he jumped to his feet, and shrieked "Murderers!" so continuously that the echo of his cry rang in my ears that day and for many days.

Meanwhile another scene was passing on the bridge between the man John and the captain of the Bellonic.

"What do you want aboard of my ship?" cried the latter; and "Roaring John" answered him with a mocking leer:

"We've come aboard to hang you, to begin on!"

The men with the young officer cocked their revolvers at this, and I said in a mad frenzy which would not brook silence—

"You scoundrel, if you touch another soul here