Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/163

Rh blade, for anger strikes, but revenge stabs; and I will secure the gangway, and fight along with you.'

"I heard and obeyed, and, gliding among them, thrust one of them through and through; a second and a third dropped, ere they saw who was among them. The captain attempted to draw a pistol, but my sword and my friend's entered at back and bosom; and, though two yet remained unhurt, I struck my sword a second time through the bosom of my mortal enemy, as he lay beneath me, and the last expiring glance of his eye was a look worth remembering. Ere this was accomplished, the other two were both lying with their companions. I have frequently imagined that a firmness and strength more than my own were given me during this desperate encounter. Meanwhile the remainder of the crew below set no bounds to their merriment and shouting, and seemed, as my Scottish friend remarked, ordained to die by my hand, since their clamour, by drowning the groans of their comrades, prevented them from providing for their safety. We fastened the cabin door and barricaded the gangway, keeping watch for many days with pistol and sword, with the hope of seeing some friendly shore, or a compassionate sail; while the vessel, urged onward by a strong wind, scudded with supernatural swiftness through the midnight waters. We had entered the Solway sea, when a storm came on, which, augmenting every moment, carried us rapidly along. When opposite Allanbay, a whirlwind, seizing our ship by the rigging, whirled her fairly round, and dashed her against a sandbank. As the planks sundered, and the waters rushed in, I beheld an armed man, one of the band of wretches from below, rise up before me with a look of fury which a fiend might envy. Our hatred was superior to the tempest and the scene of desolation around, and, drawing, our cutlasses, we sought each other's bosom. There is a fate in all things—the planks parted beneath our feet, and the sea broke over us, and he escaped me then, to perish by my hand to-night. Revenge is sweetest when it comes unhoped for. As we sank in the waves, a passing vessel, it seems, saved my sweet May Colvine, while the remainder of the crew went to the bottom, without the chance of swimming for an existence they deserved not to prolong. Such is my story."

Little more is known with certainty of the life of this remarkable man. He forsook his house soon after, and