“There is a woman--that’s a woman’s voice, I’ll swear,” I heard them exclaim on board, and I cried again: “Yes, yes. There is a woman.” “I dare say. But where do you come in? You are a distressed Englishman, aren’t you?” a voice came back. “You shall let us come up on your ship,” Seraphina said. “I shall come myself, alone--Seraphina Riego.” “Eh, what?” the voice asked. I felt a little wind on the back of my head. There was desperate hurry. “We are escaping to get married,” I called out. They were beginning to shout orders on the ship. “Oh, you’ve come to the wrong shop. A church is what you want for _that_ trouble,” the voice called back brutally, through the other cries of orders to square the yards. I shouted again, but my voice must have been drowned in the creaking of blocks and yards. They were alert enough for every chance of getting away--for every flaw of wind. Already the ship was less distinct, as if my eyes had grown dim. By the time a voice on board her cried, “Belay,” faintly, she had gone from my sight. Then the puff of wind passed away, too, and left us more alone than ever, with only the small disk of the moon poised vertically above the mists. “Listen,” said Tomas Castro, after what seemed an eternity of crestfallen silence. He need not have spoken; there could be no doubt that Manuel had lost himself, and my belief is that the ship had sailed right into the midst of the flotilla. There was an unmistakable character of surprise in the distant tumult that arose suddenly, and as suddenly ceased for a space of a breath or two. “Now, Castro,” I shouted. “Ha! _bueno!_” We gave way with a vigour that seemed to lift the dinghy out of the water. The uproar gathered volume and fierceness. From the first it was a hand-to-hand contest, engaged in suddenly, as if the assailants had at once managed to board in a body, and, as it were, in one unanimous spring. No shots had been fired. Too far to hear the blows, and seeing nothing as yet of the ship, we seemed to be hastening towards a deadly struggle of voices, of shadows with leathern throats; every cry heard in battle was there--rage, encouragement, fury, hate, and pain. And those of pain were amazingly distinct. They were yells; they were howls. And suddenly, as we approached the ship, but before we could make out any sign of her, we came upon a boat. We had to swerve to clear her. She seemed to have dropped out of the fight in utter disarray; she lay with no oars out, and full of men who writhed and tumbled over each other, shrieking as if they had been flayed. Above the writhing figures in the middle of the boat, a tall man, upright in the stern-sheets, raved awful imprecations and shook his fists above his head.