“And would you go with me?” demanded Cromwell, gazing curiously in the girl’s fierce, flushed face. “Yes--no--yes, if you could get clear, and save your neck and your money,” returned Gillian with cynical frankness. “Ay, I thought as much, Mistress,” retorted the sailor, “and I’m a fool to care for such a woman; but still I do, and when I go you shall go too, or if I’m hung you shall have the price of a soul. Thirty pieces satisfied Judas, didn’t it?” “Here’s another man coming,” replied Gillian coldly, and with no more words she walked away, while Cromwell, turning to the new-comer, said,-- “Well, Higgins, I’m beholden to you for setting me on his track, and here he is. He lifted his hand on me, and I felled him with a tap of my cutlass hilt. See if he’s hurt.” Higgins, a man of few words, stared for a moment into his captain’s face, looked after the retreating figure of Gillian, and then kneeling beside his comrade fingered the wound awhile, mumbling, “Hurt, I should say! ’Tis a shrewd wound i’faith! A parlous cut! ’Tis life and death, and nigher death than life, to my mind.” “Nonsense, man,” replied Cromwell a little uneasily. “A great hulking fellow like that don’t die of a tap on his numskull. Run you into the village and fetch a surgeon. Hasten, now, and when you’ve sent him, see about some sort of litter, that we may take him to Cole’s tavern.” “’Tis no use,” grumbled Higgins, but still scrambled to his feet, and set off at such good speed that in half an hour Doctor Matthew Fuller, nephew and successor of our old friend Doctor Samuel, was on the spot and encouraging the wounded man’s efforts toward consciousness. But so soon as he could sit up and speak, Voysye, true to his nature, paid his surgeon’s bill with a curse, responded to his captain’s rough expressions of amity with sulky silence, and scorning the litter, or even the support of a friendly arm, staggered off toward the shore, and as soon as possible got aboard ship and comforted his wound with as much Santa Cruz rum as he could obtain, seasoning it with dire threats of vengeance against Higgins, who prudently kept out of his way. “’Tis an ill wind blown over,” reported Cromwell to his sweetheart that night; and so it might have proved but that Voysye, waking next morning in the dispositions natural to a man who has a fevered wound across his head, and has gone to bed very drunk, insisted upon going ashore to find and fight with Higgins, who had, as he knew, reported him to the captain. In the captain’s absence all discipline had fallen into such disrepute that nobody opposed the half-delirious movements of the wounded man, who went ashore, roved around for a while, and finally, just as he had discovered Higgins and was pointing a pistol at his head, was seized with convulsions, and twenty-four hours later lay a dead man in an upper chamber of Cole’s tavern.