Of Battle, Murder and Resolution Day, His Point of View

And now, nothing heeding my defenceless situation and the further horrors that might be mine aboard this accursed pirate ship, I nevertheless knew great content for that, with every plunge and roll of the vessel, I was so much the nearer Nombre de Dios town where lay prisoned my enemy, Richard Brandon; thus I made of my sinful lust for vengeance a comfort to my present miseries, and plotting my enemy's destruction, found therein much solace and consolation.

I had crept into a sheltered corner and here, my knees drawn up, my back against one of the weather guns, presently fell a-dozing. I was roused by a kick to find the ship rolling prodigiously, the air full of spray and a piping wind, and Captain Belvedere scowling down on me, supporting himself by grasping a backstay in one hand and flourishing a case-bottle in the other.

"Ha, 's fish, d'ye live yet?" roared he in drunken frenzy. "Ha'n't Black Pompey done your business? Why, then--here's for ye!" And uttering a great oath, he whirled up the bottle to smite; but, rolling in beneath his arm, I staggered him with a blow of my fettered hands, then (or ever I might avoid him) he had crushed me beneath his foot: and then Joanna stood fronting him. Pallid, bare-headed, wild of eye, she glared on him and before this look he cowered and shrank away.

"Drunken sot!" cried she. "Begone lest I send ye aloft to join yon carrion!" And she pointed where Job's stiff body plunged and swung and twisted at the reeling yard-arm.