Then Aboli changed his attack once more: he forced Hal to overreach by feinting low to the left hip, then shifted his weight and lunged with a long right arm. The shining blade flew straight through Hal's guard and the watchers roared as at last they had the blood they craved.
Hal reeled sideways off the mast and stood panting in the sunlight, blinded by his own sweat. Blood dripped slowly onto his jerkin but from a nick only, made with a surgeon's skill.
"Another scar for you each time you fight like a woman!" Aboli scolded him.
With an expression of exhausted disbelief, Hal raised his left hand, which still held the dirk, and with the back of his fist wiped the blood from his chin. The tip of his earlobe was neatly split and the quantity of blood exaggerated the severity of the wound.
The spectators bellowed with derision and mirth.
"By Satan's teeth!" one of the coxswains laughed. "The pretty boy has more blood than he has guts!"
At the gibe, a swift transformation came over Hal. He lowered his dirk and extended the point in the guard position, ignoring the blood that still dripped from his chin. His face was blank, like that of a statue, and his lips set and blanched frosty white. From his throat issued a low growl, and he launched himself at the Negro.
He exploded across the deck with such speed that Aboli was taken by surprise and driven back. When they locked blades he felt the new power in the boy's arm, and his eyes narrowed. Then Hal was upon him like a wounded wildcat bursting from a trap.
Pain and rage put wings on his feet. His eyes were pitiless and his clenched jaws tightened the muscles of his face into a mask that retained no trace of boyishness. Yet his fury had not robbed him of reason and cunning. All the skill that the lad had accumulated, over hundreds of hours and days upon the practice deck, suddenly coalesced.
The watchers bayed as this miracle took place before their eyes. It seemed that, in that instant, the boy had become a man, had grown in stature so that he stood chin to chin and eye to eye with his dark adversary.
It cannot last, Aboli told himself, as he met the attack. His strength cannot hold out. But this was a new man he confronted, and he had not yet recognized him.
Suddenly he found himself giving ground he will tire soon but the twin blades that danced before his eyes seemed dazzling and ethereal, like the dread spirits of the dark forests that had once been his home.
He looked into the pale face and burning eyes and did not know them. He felt a superstitious awe assail him, which slowed his right arm. This was a demon, with a demon's unnatural strength. He knew that he was in danger of his life.
The next coup sped at his chest, glancing through his guard like a sunbeam. He twisted aside his upper body, but the thrust raked under his raised left arm. He felt no pain but heard the rasp of the razor edge against his ribs, and the warm flood of blood down his flank. And he had ignored the weapon in Hal's left fist and the boy used either hand with equal ease.
At the edge of his vision he saw the shorter, stiffer blade speed towards his heart and threw himself back to avoid it. His heel caught in the tail of the yard brace, coiled on the deck, and he went sprawling. The elbow of his sword arm slammed into the gunwale, numbing it to the fingertips, and the cutlass flew from his fingers.
On his back, Aboli looked up helplessly and saw death above him in those terrifying green eyes. This was not the face of the child who had been his ward and special charge for the last decade, the boy he had cherished and trained and loved over ten long years. This was a man who would kill him. The bright point of the cutlass started down, aimed at his throat, with the full weight of the lithe young body behind it.
"Henry!" A stern, authoritative voice rang across the deck, cutting through the hubbub of the blood-crazed spectators.
Hal started, and stood still with the point against Aboli's throat. A bemused expression spread across his face, like that of an awakening dreamer, and he looked up at his father on the break of the poop.
"Avast that tomfoolery. Get you down to my cabin at once.
Hal glanced around the deck, at the flushed, excited faces surrounding him. He shook his head in puzzlement, and looked down at the cutlass in his hand. He opened his fingers and let it drop to the planks. His legs turned to water under him and he sank down on top of Aboli and hugged him as a child hugs his father.
"Aboli!" he whispered, in the language of the forests that the black man had taught him and which was a secret no other white man on the ship shared with them. "I have hurt you sorely. The blood! By my life, I could have killed you Aboli chuckled softly and answered in the same language, "It was past time. At last you have tapped the well of warrior blood. I thought you would never find it. I had to drive you hard to it."
He sat up and pushed Hal away, but there was a new light in his eyes as he looked at the boy, who was a boy no longer. "Go now and do your father's bidding!"
Hal stood up shakily and looked again round the circle of faces, seeing an expression in them that he did not recognize: it was respect mingled with more than a little fear.
"What are you gawking at?" bellowed Ned Tyler. "The play is over. Do you have no work to do? Man those pumps. Those topgallants are luffing. I can find mastheads for all idle hands." There was the thump of bare feet across the deck as the crew rushed guiltily to their duties.
Hal stooped, picked up the cutlass, and handed it back to the boatswain, hilt first.
"Thank you, Ned. I had need of it."
"And you put it to good use. I have never seen that heathen bested, except by your father before you."
Hal tore a handful of rag from the tattered hem of his canvas pantaloons, held it to his ear to staunch the bleeding, and went down to the stern cabin.