Foster's own plan, and secure the long-boat, if we could only get betwixt the Indiaman's crew and the water; or even try our own, on the opposite side of the island, and carry off the other boats to the wreck; after which we might keep off till the schooner appeared, as she couldn't be long of doing in this weather. I had just stolen back to the men and Mr Rollock, when all at once there was a wild cry, not twenty yards off, among the brushwood. A heavy blow and a struggle, in the midst of which three shots, one after the other, were heard from the cadets; next minute, with oaths and curses to the mast-head, and a crash through amongst the branches in the dark, Foster and his shipmates came making for the opening. Something horrible flashed through my mind as I fancied I had caught Finch's voice, whether one way or the other I couldn't say, for I had no thought at the time excepting for Violet. Shriek upon shriek broke from the ladies ere I well knew I had big Harry himself by the hairy throat of him, as he was aiming a left-handed stroke of his cutlass at the Judge, who had sprung betwixt him and his daughter. The strength of that ruffian was wonderful, for he flung me off and levelled Sir Charles Hyde at the same moment, the Judge's body tripping me. Jones and my own men, as well as the Planter, were hard at work with the other five desperate villains; while the cadets and the second officer of the Seringapatam rushed in from the trees--all of it passing in half a minute. As I started to my feet, Foster had lifted Violet Hyde in his arms, and was dashing through the darkest of the wood with her toward the hollow; when, just as I was hard upon him, doubly to my horror, above all the screams of the ladies I could hear the wild drunken shouts of the crew below coming up from the beach like so many devils. Foster had got as far as the next opening where the rubbish of the hut was, and, no doubt catching the sound as well as myself, all at once he dropped the young lady on the grass--in a faint as she was, and her white dress stained with blood, as I thought from _herself_. "Now ye----" shouted he, turning bolt round till her moveless figure lay betwixt us, with a flourish of his cutlass, which I fancied was bloody too--"who are _you_? You'll have a dozen on ye directly, but what's meat for the skipper's meat for the passenger, so--" "Devil!" said I through my teeth, as I edged round; and Foster was in the very act of rushing at me, whether he trod on her or not, when my voice or dress seemed to strike him in the dusk. "How the bloody comfort did _you_--" said he, shrinking back for a moment; "so much the better, by G--!" and he sprang forward again right upon me, with a swinging boarder's blow at my head, which flashed off my blade with a force enough to have shivered it, had it not been a first-rate old cut-and-thrust I had tried pretty stiffly before. If I hadn't been in such a fury of rage,