Читать книгу The Gentleman - Alfred Ollivant - Страница 53

Aft and alone stood the old Commander, a dead man at his feet.

Another swarmed over the side. The old Commander's boarding-pike met him fair in the face. Back the fellow went into darkness and death.

"Good old Ding-dong!" came the Gunner's rollicking bellow, as he stormed up on deck, swinging his chain-shot like a battle-axe. "That's your sort!—bash em! blast em!—disembowl the—— Turks!"

Behind him, out of the smoke, poured the men, red-hot and roaring, like lava spewed up from the bowels of a volcano.

A stream of boarders, trickling over the bulwarks, raced across the deck to meet them.

"Love and War! O my God, ain't they glory?" howled the Gunner, and plunged into the opposing flood.

One man he felled with his chain-shot; then flung it aside.

"Naked does it!" he roared, and swept up a boarder in his arms. "Ow, the luscious little armful! no good kickin, duckie! You've got to ave it!" He rushed to the side, hugging his man, and screaming fearful laughter.

"Love me and forgive me, pretty tartie!" he roared, and smashed his burthen down over the side.

The fellow crashed into a ladder of boarders, swarming up one behind the other. Back they hurled into the boats, a hurricane of men, one on top of t'other. The boat rocked, crumpled up, and sank.

The tears were rolling down the Gunner's face.

"Quenched their little ardour!" he bellowed, leaping on to the bulwark. "That's the style below there, boys! Go it, ye cripples! Give em the little Tremendous!"

Beneath him the sea was black with boats. From the port-holes of the main-deck the wounded were leaning out, hailing round-shot down into the boats.

"Plug em! ply em!" roared the Gunner. "Red ot shot—cannister—case! anything ye like only give em slaughter for eaven's sweet sake!"

He was back in the thick of it, raving up and down the deck, sowing death broadcast, his great voice everywhere.

Not a man on board but seemed to have caught something of his heroic fury. The purser's steward, primmest of Methodists, who was said to pass his time in action converting the cook, came tripping out of the galley, a black-jack of boiling water in his hand.

"Glory for you!" he screamed, and flung the contents in the face of a boarder.

"There's the proper Christian!" gasped the Gunner, slammed up against the main-mast. "Propagate the Gospel ow ye can!—bilin bilge!—buckets o filth!—spit in his face if ye can't do no better."

A tall Frenchman pistoled the little steward.

The ship's cook, a flabby great flat-footed man, all in white, and snorting strangely, bundled up with a poll-axe, and cleft the Frenchman's skull.

"It a chap your own size!" he yelled, and felled from behind, went down himself.