"Hola, Martino!" cried she. "D'ye live yet? 'Tis well. If we die to-day we die together, and where a properer death or one more fitting for such as you and I, for am I killed first, Resolution shall send you after me to bear me company, yes."
So saying, she smiled and nodded and turned to summon Resolution, who came in limping haste.
"What, are ye hurt, Jo?" cried he, peering. "Ha, Joanna lass, are ye hit indeed?"
"A little, yes!" said she, and staggering against the mast leaned there as if faint, yet casting a swift, furtive glance over her shoulder. "But death cometh behind me, Resolution, and my pistol's gone and yours both empty--"
Now glancing whither she looked, I saw Captain Belvedere come bounding up the ladder, cutlass in one hand and pistol in the other.
"Are ye there, Jo, are ye there?" he cried and stood to scowl on her.
"Resolution," said she, drooping against the mast, "fight me the ship--"
"And what o' me?" snarled Belvedere.
"You?" cried she. "Ah--bah!" and turning, she spat at him and, screaming, fell headlong as his pistol flashed. But over her prostrate form leapt Resolution and there, while the battle roared about them, I watched as, with steel that crashed unheard in that raging uproar, they smote and parried and thrust until an eddying smoke-cloud blotted them from my view. Now fain would I have come at Joanna where she lay, yet might not for my bonds, although she was so near; suddenly as I watched her (and struggling thus vainly to reach her) I saw she was watching me.
"And would you aid your poor Joanna, yes?" she questioned faintly.
"'Twas so my thought--"
"Because I am dying, Martino? Doth this grieve you?"
"You are over-young to die!"
"And my life hath been very hard and cruel! Would you kiss a dying woman an' she might creep to your arms, Martino?"
Slowly and painfully she dragged herself within my reach and, beholding the twisted agony of her look, reading the piteous supplication in her eyes, I stooped to kiss the pale brow she lifted to my lips and--felt two arms about me vigorous and strong and under mine the quivering passion of her mouth; then she had loosed me and was before me on her knees, flushed and tremulous as any simple maid.
I was yet gazing on her in dumb and stark amaze, when from somewhere hard by a man cried out in wild and awful fashion, and as this agonised screaming swelled upon the air, Joanna rose up to her feet and stood transfigured, her eyes fierce and wild, her clenched teeth agleam 'twixt curling lips; and presently through the swirling smoke limped Resolution Day, a dreadful, bedabbled figure, who, beholding Joanna on her feet, flourished a dripping blade and panted exultant.