Still onward dashed the ships, their spars and rigging yet locked together, the wild sea threatening each moment to claim them as its prize; when, as for an instant their hulls ground together, a form was seen to spring from the shrouds of the pirate ship on to the deck of the Christian. "Faithless tyrants, I am no longer your slave!" he exclaimed, as he hurled his gleaming sabre among the people he had just quitted: "I may now die among my countrymen." The words were scarce heard amid the tumult, or the action seen; and, as he fell, the cutlass of a seaman brought him bleeding to the deck, where he lay, trampled on and disregarded, amid some of the Portuguese who had been struck down. At the same moment, the glare of the forked lightning exhibited a hundred swarthy turbaned figures on the nettings and lower rigging of the Rover, and, like a rush of fierce vultures on their prey, with loud yells, the foremost threw themselves on the deck of the corvette, when the upper works of the two ships again separated. "Onward, my men, onward!" shouted Captain Pinto, rushing forward to repel them at the head of a party of his best seamen, with Don Luis by his side, who, at the first fierce onset, warded off a blow which might have proved fatal to the gallant chief. But the pirates fought with all the ferocity of despair and fanaticism, for they neither expected nor asked for mercy; their only hope was in victory. Yet, notwithstanding the desperate resistance they made, they could not withstand the superior numbers of the Portuguese: loudly rung their fierce war cries; their sharp sabres flashed brightly as they strove for life, every moment expecting to be reinforced by their friends, who waited but the returning roll, when the upper works of the ships should again meet, to rush on board; the flashes from the muskets of the marines, and the pistols of the seamen, between the gleams of lightning, alone exhibiting the combatants to each other, all the lights on board having been extinguished to prevent the enemy from taking aim. Again they rallied, the Portuguese giving way. A gigantic Moor, who had fallen as they first leapt on board, now extricating himself, attacked Don Luis with such desperate fury, that, although he defended himself with courage and coolness, he would have been overthrown, had not Pedro contrived to get a cut at the Moor's arm, which brought him bleeding to the deck. The brave captain once more calling upon his men, pressed the Moors hard: inch by inch they were cut down, or forced back, till they were driven over the nettings into the dark yawning gulf below, or ground by the sides of the ships. But this short success had cost the Portuguese dear, and even their chief felt that they could with difficulty contend against the swarm of desperate miscreants, who were ready at the moment to throw themselves headlong among them, nor had the people aloft yet succeeded, in spite of all their efforts, in clearing the rigging.