Well, I
found one lanky chap--he was number four that night--and all in ten
minutes, as it were, I jabbed a pike at him, and missed, for it was hard
to keep footin' on the wet deck, though the wet was not Hugli water;
thick as it is, this was thicker--and he fired a pistol at me by way of
thank you. I saw his figurehead in the flash, and I shan't forget it
either, for he left me this to remember him by, though I didn't know it
at the time."
Here Bulger held up the iron hook that did duty for his left forearm.
Then glancing cautiously around, he added in a whisper:
"'Twas Diggle--or I'm a Dutchman. That was my fust meetin' with him. Of
course, I'm in a way helpless now, being on the ship's books, and he in a
manner of speakin' an orficer; but one of these days there'll be a
reckonin', or my name en't Bulger."
The boatswain brought down his fist with a resounding whack on the
scuttle butt, threatening to stave in the top of the barrel.
"And how did the fight end?" asked Desmond.
"We drove 'em back bit by bit, and fairly wore 'em down. They weren't all
sailormen, or we couldn't have done it, for they had the numbers; but an
Englishman on his own ship is worth any two furriners--aye, half a dozen
some do say, though I wouldn't go so far as that myself--and at the last
some of them turned tail and bolted back. The ship's boy, what was in the
shrouds, saw 'em on the run and set up a screech: 'Hooray! hooray!' That
was all we wanted. We hoorayed too; and went at 'em in such a slap-bang
go-to-glory way that in a brace of shakes there wasn't a Frenchman, a
Dutchman, nor a Moor on board.
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