Uttering the beggars' piercing cry: "Sultan before Pope!" the helmsman of the black galley eluded the guard of Leone della Rota's sword, stabbed out and with a cry Antonio Valani, the captain of the Andrea Doria turned and stumbled, his sword falling clattering from his hand and with it Antonio valani himself. The sea beggar leapt over the body of the Genoan while a second thrust merely grazed the lieutenant's left shoulder. Sailors from the Andrea Doria invaded the stairs, brandishing their ship's knives. A wild and bloody struggle developed in a confined space and all this time Myga van Bergen lay unconscious on the floor. Spanish and Albanian soldiers added to the turmoil, lamps and torches went out, glimmered on the floor and were re-lit. Few people knew what was really going on and when suddenly the cry: "Fire! Fire!" echoed through the house, the confused throng fled in panic and back down the stairs. Dense choking smoke filled all the rooms in the house and through it the Genoese sailors dragged their mortally wounded captain and the chained sea beggar, Jan Norris! Leone della Rota carried the senseless Myga through the smoke down to the street where a new fight was threatening to break out between the sailors of the Andrea Doria and Spanish soldiers who tried to wrest their prisoner away from the former. But a drumroll proclaimed the arrival of a high-ranking officer to whom Leone reported insofar as the trance-like state he found himself in allowed him to. The Spaniard airily expressed the opinion that the best thing would be to carry the wounded captain, the sea beggar and the woman aboard ship, then early the following morning all would be ready for the trial and anyway the prisoner deserved to be hanged from a yardarm as a pirate so that his immediate removal to the galleon was, from this point of view too, the most fitting solution to the problem. The crowd was thronging round the quayside down below. Torches cast light on the wild procession and projected their flickering reflections over the wounded Antonio, the unconscious Myga and Jan Norris in chains who allowed himself to be dragged along by his fierce foes apathetically. Still Leone della Rota was holding Myga in his arms, but without understanding how this had come about. Everything was turning around and around in his head. As if in a dream he carried his light burden on to the galleon. In the cabin a place was prepared for the wounded captain. A surgeon came to examine the injuries of the still unconscious Antonio and to shake his head over them. Myga van Bergen crouched in a corner of the cabin with no-one, for the time being, bothering about her. The helmsman of the black galley was chained to the main mast and his pitiless enemies surrounded him sneering.