I glimpsed in a single fleeting instant the handkerchief knotted about his skull, the snarling bearded face, the cutlass swung high in a brawny hand. No time for her to draw sword or pistol—he loomed over her like the shadow of death and the cutlass swept downward—but even as it did I drew pistol and fired blindly and without aim. He swerved sidewise, the cutlass veering wildly, and pitched face down in the sand without a sound. And so close had been her escape that the sweep of his blade had knocked the cocked hat from the girl's locks.
I fairly flung myself down the cliff and stood over the body of the buccaneer. The deed had been done involuntarily, without conscious thought, but I did not regret it. Whether the girl deserved saving from death—a fact which I doubted— I considered it a worthy deed to rid the seas of at least one of those wolves which scoured it.
Helen was dusting her garments and cursing softly to herself because her hat was awry.
"Come," said I, somewhat vexed, "you are lucky to have escaped with a skull uncloven. Let us begone ere his comrades come up at the sound of the shot."
"That was a goodly feat," said she, preparing to follow me. "Fair through the temples you drilled him—I doubt me if I could have done better."
"It was pure luck that guided the ball," I answered angrily, for of all faults I detest in women, heartlessness is the greatest. "I had no time to take aim— and had I had such time, I might not have fired."
This silenced her and she said no more until we reached the opposite cliffs. There at the foot stretched a long expanse of solid stone and I bade her walk upon it. So we went along the line of the cliff and presently came to a small waterfall where a stream tumbled over the cliffs edge to join the one in the gorge.
"There's a cave behind that fall," said I, speaking above the chatter of the water. "I discovered it by accident one day. Follow me."
So saying, I waded into the pool which whirled and eddied at the cliff's foot, and ducking my head, plunged through the falling sheet of water with the girl close behind. We found ourselves in a small dark cavern which ran back until it vanished in the blackness, and in front the light ebbed in faintly through the silver screen of the falling water. This was the hiding place I had been making for when I met the girl.
f led the way back into the cavern until the sound of the falling stream died to a murmur and the girl's face glimmered like a rare white flower in the thick darkness.
"Damme," she said, beating the water from her coat with the cocked hat, "you lead me in some cursed inconvenient places, Mr. Harmer; first, I fall in the sand and soil my garments, and now they are wet. Will not Gower and his gang follow the sound of the pistol shot and find us, tracking our footprints where we bent down the bushes crossing from cliff to cliff?"
"No doubt they will come," I answered, "but they will be able to track us only to the cliff where we walked a good way on stone which shows no footprint. They will not know whether we went up or down or whither. There's not one chance in a hundred of them ever discovering this cavern. At any rate, it's the safest place on the island for us."
"Do you still wish you had let Dick Comrel kill me?" she asked.
"He was a bloody pirate, whatever his name might be," I replied. "No, you're too comely for such a death, no matter what your crimes."
"Your compliments take the sting from your accusations, but your accusations rob your compliments of their sweetness. Do you really hate me?"
"No, not you, but the red trade you follow. Were you in some other walk of life it's joyed I'd be to look on you."
"Zounds," said she, "but you are a strange fellow. One moment you talk like a courtier and the next like a chaplain. What really are your feelings that you speak so inconsistently?"
"I am fascinated and repelled," I replied, for the dim white oval of her face floated before me and her nearness made my senses reel. "As a woman, you attract me, but, as a pirate, you rouse a loathing in me. God's truth, but you are a very monster, like that Lilith of old, with the face of a beautiful maiden and the body of a serpent."
Her soft laugh lilted silvery and mocking in the shadows.
"So, so, broad-brim. You saved my life, though methinks you grudge the act, and I will not run you through the body as I might have done otherwise. For such words as you have just said I like not. Are you wondering how I came to be here with you?"
"They of the Red Brotherhood are like hungry wolves and range everywhere," I answered. "I've yet to sight an island of the Main unpolluted by their cursed feet. So it's no wonder to me to find them here, or to find them marooning each other."
"Marooned? John Gower marooned from his own ship? Scarcely, friend. The craft from which I landed is The Black Raider, on The Account as you know. She sails to intercept a Spanish merchantman and returns in two weeks."
