He was on the schooner's quarter now, and the vessels were not a cable's-length apart. Another broadside — a crash below and a hole in the forecourse. The schooner would have to dodge again at once, or submit meekly to having the Delaware run alongside her. Here it came! Peabody had foreseen it and was ready.
"Hard a starboard!" he ordered the quartermaster, and then, lifting his voice: "Starboard guns!"
The neat turn brought the ships close together, heading in the same direction.
"Hard a port now," said Peabody, and as the Delaware's broadside crashed out frigate and schooner came together in the smoke.
Peabody's fighting blood was racing through his veins. He had drawn his sword and swung himself into the mizzen rigging.
"Boarders!" he yelled.
There was no need for self-control now, no need for clear thinking. He could fling himself into the fight, abandoning himself to the mad impulse of it all, and recompense himself for months of rigid caution. He scrambled down into the mizzen chains and dropped onto the schooner's deck, sword in hand. Behind him the Delaware swung round, pushing the schooner before her, widening the gap between the vessels' sterns and closing it at their bows, while the boarders jostled each other at the main deck ports, and he was left all alone — and unconscious of it — abaft the wheel on the schooner's deck.
The hurricane of canister shot had swept the schooner like a broom. There were dead men everywhere, and only a few half-naked black figures were grabbing weapons to meet the attack. But not five yards from Peabody was Lerouge in his red coat with the gold lace flashing in the sun, eyes and teeth gleaming in his black face, and Peabody leaped forward to cut him down. His sword clashed on Lerouge's guard; Peabody cut again, the cut was warded off, and then he thrust and thrust again at the bosom of the red coat. He might as well have been thrusting at a stone wall.
It dawned upon him that Lerouge was a swordsman who must have picked up the art of fencing during his service in the French Navy. He feinted and lunged; the lunge was parried, and he lunged again desperately to anticipate the riposte. That riposte would come soon, he knew already. Only while he could maintain this fierce attack was his life safe — the moment it slackened Lerouge's blade would dart forward and kill him, he knew. He beat against Lerouge's blade, thrusting first over and then under, his iron strength and long reach only a poor compensation for his lack of skill, trying to remember his early lessons in swordsmanship, and the course of a dozen hours in fencing he had received twelve years ago from the Maltese fencing master in Valletta. The blades rasped harshly together, jarring his fingers as they gripped his sword hilt, and only in the nick of time did he beat aside the first thrust which Lerouge had made. This was death, death in the hot sun; the loud noises of battle which he heard about him reached his consciousness as faintly as the squeaking of mice.
Lerouge's mirthless grin, as his thick lips parted snarling, appeared to grow wider and wider until Peabody seemed to see nothing else. The sword blades slipped apart, and Peabody made a wild blind effort to cover himself. There was a sudden burning pain in his right forearm, and his sword hilt escaped from his paralyzed fingers. Desperately he leaped forward; chance — or his own rapid instinctive reactions — put Lerouge's sword blade into his left hand, low down by the guard, and he tore the weapon out of his path as he closed with his powerful antagonist. His right arm was paralyzed no longer as he flung it round Lerouge. His left hand battled against Lerouge's right for control of the sword, his right behind Lerouge's back seized the golden epaulette on Lerouge's right shoulder, and his right foot was behind Lerouge's heel. He put out all his strength for the fall, was balked, swayed to his left, and heaved again in one last insane effort. Lerouge's feet left the deck, and he fell with a crash, Peabody staggering above him with the sword in his left hand and the golden threads of the torn-off epaulette in his right.
The deck was thronged by now with American sailors cheering and shouting, and the din they were raising reached Peabody's ears now in its natural volume. Someone came rushing forward with a pike to pin Lerouge to the deck as he rolled over on his face, but Peabody kicked the weapon up in the nick of time.
"Tie him up, Harvey," he said, recognizing the man, and a dozen willing hands grabbed lengths of rope and bound Lerouge until he was helpless.
The schooner was captured — here came O'Brien running breathlessly aft with an American flag to hoist at her peak while the Calypso came tearing up with all sail set, too late to show in the honor of the capture; and here came Captain Davenant, as fast as he could heave his ship to, and as fast as his gig could whisk him across the big Atlantic rollers.
"Congratulations, Peabody," he said.
"Thank you, sir," said Peabody.
It was pleasant to have made a clean job of the business before the British arrived.
"You are wounded, sir!" said Davenant.
Peabody looked down; blood was dripping slowly, in heavy blobs, down his right hand and falling on the deck. His right sleeve was heavy with blood as he moved his arm. And his left hand hurt him too — as he looked at it he saw that the horny palm had several haggled cuts across it where the nearly blunt part of Lerouge's blade had scored it.
"It's nothing," said Peabody.
"Wounds in this climate are always important, sir," said Davenant. "Have you a capable surgeon? Hamilton, go back and fetch Doctor Clarke."
The midshipman touched his cap and dashed off.
"My doctors are quite capable, thank you, sir," said Peabody. He was conscious of a lassitude which was unusual to him and he did not want to argue about anything — the sun seemed too hot.
"They will probably be glad of Clarke's opinion all the same," said Davenant, and then, looking round the schooner: "And I suppose this is Lerouge?"
The burly Negro in his red coat snarled again in his bonds as attention was drawn to him — Peabody remembered that snarl vividly.
"A nasty-looking customer," said Davenant. "Any other survivors?"
There were six of them, grouped round the mainmast, all bound. Two of them were squatting on the deck, weeping aloud. Lerouge looked at the two captains and saw his death in their faces.
"St. Amant'll hang 'em if we take 'em back to Fort-de-France," said Davenant. "It'll mean a trial and evidence and depositions, though. He's a whale for the letter of the law — we both know that."
"We've taken 'em red-handed," said Peabody. He knew the law of the sea and the instant fate which awaited pirates. His head was beginning to swim in the heat, and there was a hint of sickness in his stomach, although Lerouge deserved nothing better than this that was going to happen to him — something worse, if anything. Pirates captured at sea by the officers of a navy were hanged on the spot. Hubbard had turned up from somewhere, and his dark saturnine face wore a message of doom for the pirates, too; Peabody saw the two deep grooves between the bushy black eyebrows. Those grooves seemed to fill the whole seascape at that moment.
"Hang them," said Peabody. He hardly recognized his own voice as he spoke.
His head was swimming worse than ever, and his impressions of the rest of the business were confused. He would never forget the wild struggles of the bound Lerouge as the hands dragged him away down the heaving deck, nor the screams of one of the other Negroes and the ugly sounds with which they ended.