Neither could maintain the present pace for very long, and Jeremy decided to risk everything on a maneuver his father had taught him long ago. He slowly allowed himself to be pulled out of a proper guard position, or so it seemed. His sword moved farther and farther to the left, leaving his defense wide open. He could sense Sir lan's growing confidence, and when the baronet struck, Jeremy was ready. He whipped his sword back into line, slipped inside the other's lunge, and drove straight and true at the Scotsman's heart.
Sir lan's sword fell to the cobbles, and he stood for a moment swaying, astonishment and hatred showing on his face. Then he fell to the stones, dead.
At that instant there was a long, shuddering movement of the earth that knocked Jeremy backward. The ground heaved convulsively, then opened up in a wide, jagged gap, revealing a murky, black hole. It closed again a moment later in another violent surge, and Sir lan's body was gone, swallowed up by the land itself.
Chapter Nineteen
WHEN doubt no longer existed as to the outcome of the battle for the Citadel and those boucaniers who had not been killed began to surrender in large numbers, Sir Arthur Bartlett left the mopping-up operation in the hands of subordinates and returned to King's House. With him went several of his aides, and it was the decision of the governor general to leave the scene of the fight that undoubtedly saved his life when the earthquake struck Port Royal. A raw, gaping crack appeared in the face of the earth at the very spot where Sir Arthur had sat his horse, watching the progress of the battle, and the lieutenant colonel and two majors who had taken over this vantage point were swallowed up alive.
Sir Arthur did not know there had been a quake, for he sat in his study, beginning his preliminary report to the King and Queen, and his mind was so filled with his victory over the rebels that he did not see the pictures on his walls shake and the objets d'art on tables tremble. He paused now and again in his writing and wondered how soon the Duchess of Glasgow and her confederates would be hauled before him, for he would then be faced with the decision of whether to confine Her Grace to a room in King's House pending her return to England under guard or whether to throw her into prison. The Stuarts were no strangers to prisons, but none of them had even been held in so squalid and mean a hole as the Royal Penitentiary of Port Royal.
Of all the thousands of human beings on the tiny peninsular projection of the main body of Jamaica, the governor general was probably the only one who did not know of the catastrophe. Elsewhere there was terror, chaos, and death.
Jeremy Stone was numb, unable to believe the evidence of his own eyes. He had killed Sir Ian MacGregor in a fair duel, then the earth had opened and had eaten the dead man. Part of the wall behind the young gunsmith had fallen and resembled a miniature mountain of rubble. The forces of nature had done more destruction in a few seconds than artillery had accomplished in many hours. An instinct for self-preservation led Jeremy to climb up onto the rubble, and from there he made his way to the roof of the single-storied warehouse from which he had emerged into the daylight only a few minutes before. Some order was beginning to grow out of the confusion in his mind, and he was obsessed with the idea of finding Janine Groliere. At this instant nothing mattered to him but her safety, and he thought that from the roof he might be able to see the Pennywell house and to discover whether or not it still stood. As he peered over the jumbled mass of caved-in roofs and broken supports, tumbled walls and skeletons of what had been homes and shops, he could distinguish almost nothing. Familiar landmarks had disappeared, and in their place was a nightmare of ruin. He was still standing there, staring, straining, when the second quake struck. The warehouse swayed, but its supports were solid and it did not collapse. Jeremy was thrown to the roof by the tremor, and as he groped to his hands and knees, he realized dazedly that he was still alive but was incapable of further coherent thought.
A small group sat at a table in the outside garden of the Golden Bucket. Three of the men were drinking rum and listening nervously to the sound of musket fire from the Citadel. Boucaniers, they had wisely chosen not to join their brethren in the rebellion, and their earnest hope was that the brigade would win; if their former comrades should be victorious, these shirkers could anticipate little mercy. The fourth member of the party was Jonas Pennywell, who drank nothing and said little as he sat quietly with a small leather-bound Bible clasped in his hands.
When the first tremor struck, a portion of the flimsy Golden Bucket crashed to the earth, and a falling beam struck one of the boucaniers across the head, killing him instantly. His two friends were panic-stricken; one jumped to his feet and ran from the ruins, screaming at the top of his lungs; the other retched and then crawled blindly across the garden on his hands and knees. Reverend Pennywell, who had been thrown to the ground, climbed to his feet, his Bible still clutched in his hand. He opened it to the Book of Psalms and began to read aloud in a voice that was quiet but clear and utterly devoid of fear.
"He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in Him will I trust. Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust: His truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; there shall be no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling."
There was nobody left to fight, and Dirk Friendly leaned disconsolately against the wall of the inner courtyard, glowering at the prisoners who filed slowly out of the Citadel to captivity and possible death. So many of the boucaniers had surrendered that it seemed unlikely they would all be executed; the gibbets of Jamaica would not hold them all. But these men were strapping, healthy specimens, and there was plenty of battle left in them. Dirk wanted nothing more than to continue the combat, and he was angry at the rebels for giving up and spoiling what had promised to be an endless day of hand-to-hand encounters.
He had worked himself up to a rare pitch of righteous, pugnacious wrath, and it was unfair of the enemy to quit the field so soon. He looked enviously at a bearded giant dressed in tattered shirt and trousers and wearing a small gold ring in his right ear lobe. There was a man against whom an American could pit his strength and really enjoy the experience; the boucanier's shoulders were as broad as Dirk's, and the muscles of his arms budged under the remnants of his tight-fitting, filthy shirt. Dirk glared hopefully at the prisoner, who stared back at him with dull, apathetic eyes as he shuffled through the gate. The giant gunsmith sighed unhappily and scratched his head.
He glanced around for Jeremy and wondered for the fiftieth time what had happened to his friend. He was not worried, for he was convinced that Jeremy led a charmed life, and he had no doubt that his adventurous companion had managed to survive whatever mishap had prevented him from taking part in the final phase of the battle. If he would only hurry. Dirk thought, they might go searching together for a few boucaniers who had decided not to surrender.