He was back in the thick of it, raving up and down the deck, sowing death broadcast, his great voice everywhere. Not a man on board but seemed to have caught something of his heroic fury. The purser's steward, primmest of Methodists, who was said to pass his time in action converting the cook, came tripping out of the galley, a black-jack of boiling water in his hand. "Glory for you!" he screamed, and flung the contents in the face of a boarder. "There's the proper Christian!" gasped the Gunner, slammed up against the main-mast. "Propagate the Gospel ow ye can!--bilin bilge!--buckets o filth!--spit in his face if ye can't do no better." A tall Frenchman pistoled the little steward. The ship's cook, a flabby great flat-footed man, all in white, and snorting strangely, bundled up with a poll-axe, and cleft the Frenchman's skull. "It a chap your own size!" he yelled, and felled from behind, went down himself. IV Up and down the deck the battle raged: here a scrimmage; there a single fight; men at hand-grips; men hurling round-shot. They swayed, they staggered about in each other's arms; they shocked, parted, came together again. Dead men lay in the scuppers; wounded men crawled the deck; and up and down among them the living reeled. One man, turned cur, crouched under the bulwark with ghastly face uplifted, and met his death, whimpering. Another, strangely quiet amid the dance of devils, stood against the foremast, nursing a broken arm. Nobody heeded him. They were too busy. To Kit a sudden madness seemed to have possessed the world. The deck danced before him. He was bumped; he was battered; he was hurled to and fro--a twig in a torrent. All was dreadful; all was dizzy. Strange faces with appalling eyes rose before him; men breathing terribly flitted past. There was a smell of blood and sweat in his nostrils; a sound of panting and blasphemies in his ears. This then was a battle--not much like the stories! All the same he wished they wouldn't tread on his toes so. Blindly the boy slashed about him. Whether he killed them, or they killed him, he hardly knew, and didn't greatly care. A sort of instinct told him the men to stab at--the dirty beasts in shirts who showed their teeth. The naked men were his own lot. Once he heard a voice beside him. "Go it, little un! you're almost a man!" Then the Gunner staggered by, all black eyes and straining face, his arms about a huge boarder, his teeth deep in the fellow's shoulder. "Rip this ----'s backside up!" came a gurgling voice. His hand went up automatically; automatically his dirk came down. A mountain fell on top of him.... As he crept out a voice panted hard by, "Old man's down." Dizzily he saw the old Commander sprawling to a fall, a man on top of him. The boy heard him grunt as he fell. That grunt angered him. "I'm coming, sir!" he cried, and ran wrathfully with bloody dirk. _"Beast!"_ he yelled. _"Leave him alone!"_ There was no need for him to cry.