"Ah, I so grieve. Pain! pain! terrible, n'est-ce-pas?--But what would you, my Captain?--It is no fault of mine. The Emperor's orders. 'I trust you, my Commodore,' says he. 'Coûte que coûte.' "Emperor! about as much a h'Emperor as you are Commodore! And you're welcome to tell him so with my compliments," snorted the old man. He threw his eye aloft. "Mr. Caryll, take a party o small-arm men aloft, and clear them sneakin blay-guards out of her tops. Else they'll be boardin by the yards." The boy rushed away. Beneath his feet the deck staggered and shook. On the lower-deck of the _Tremendous_ hell had broken loose, in flame and smoke and horrible bellowings. The little ship was racked. In her agony she quivered from truck to keel. Suddenly the spars of the _Cocotte_ above him began to crackle and blaze. Plip-plop-plank! the bullets smacked all about him. He was under fire and he didn't like it. He wanted to dodge under the bulwark and lie there; but he daren't. So he ran breathlessly, skipping as a bullet spanked the deck at his feet. They were in the enemy's main-top, swarms of them, tiny figures, crowding along the spars, grinning at him, he thought. How on earth with a handful of men, climbing up the rigging under a pelting fire, he would ever clear that lot out!... Even as he wondered the enemy's main-mast seemed to become alive. It swayed; it shook; it almost danced; the taut shrouds sagged. At first the boy thought that horror had turned his brain, and he was going mad. He stopped dead and gazed. Yes, it was coming down, coming towards him, towering, tremendous, like a falling spire. It came in jerks, tearing its way with a snapping of stays and crashing of spars. Figures, like black birds, seemed to detach themselves, and flop through the air. They were men, thrown clear, and falling with floating coat-tails as they revolved. One fell with an appalling bump on the deck of the sloop hard by the wheel, a man in a red coat, bear-skinn'd and gaitered. He did not stir, kneeling, his hands before him, head bowed, in attitude of adoration. A sudden pool of scarlet seemed to spurt out of the deck and island him. Kit, his work accomplished for him, ran back to the wheel. "Reck'n that's the chap as got me," said old Ding-dong, nodding at the dead man with a certain grim friendliness. "A red-coat, d'ye see?--Now what's the meanin o that?--I never yeard tell of a privateer carrying regulars afoor." The old man was leaning against the wheel. His brow was puckered; and there was a tense, breathless air about his face. It came to the boy with a shock of surprise that a man hard-hit makes just the same sort of face as a man who has got one on the funny bone at cricket. "Are you hurt?" he asked anxiously. "Nay, I'm none hurt, but I am hit. They've took fifty years doin it, but they've done it at last. It was yon chap with the bashed skull. Haul him alongside o me, wilta? I'll set on him--ease my old stumps!" He lowered himself.