Martin Conisby

When sight returned to me at last, I was yet staring up at the moon, but now she had climbed the zenith and looked down on me through a dense maze, a thicket of close-twining branches (as it were) whose density troubled me mightily. But in a little I saw that these twining branches were verily a mass of ropes and cordage, a twisted tangle that hung above me yet crushed me not by reason of a squat column that rose nearby, and staring on this column I presently knew it for the shattered stump of the mizzenmast. For a great while I lay staring on this (being yet much dazed) and thus gradually became aware that the guns had fallen silent; instead of their thunderous roar was a faint clamour, hoarse, inarticulate, and very far away. I was yet wondering dreamily and pondering this when I made the further discovery that by some miraculous chance the chain which had joined my fettered wrists was broken in sunder and I was free. Nevertheless I lay awhile blinking drowsily up at the moon until at last, impelled by my raging thirst, I got to my knees (though with strange reluctance) and strove to win clear from the tangle of ropes that encompassed me; in the which labour I came upon the body of a dead man and beyond this, yet another. Howbeit I was out of this maze at last and rising to my feet, found the deck to heave oddly 'neath my tread, and so (like one walking in a dream) came stumbling to the quarter-ladder and paused there awhile to lean against the splintered rail and to clasp my aching head, for I was still greatly bemused and my body mighty stiff and painful.

Looking up after some while I saw the Happy Despatch lay a helpless wreck, her main and mizzenmasts shot away and her shattered hull fast locked in close conflict with her indomitable foe. The English ship had run us aboard at the fore-chains and as the two vessels, fast grappled together, swung to the gentle swell, the moon glinted on the play of vicious steel where the fight raged upon our forecastle. Mightily heartened by this, I strove to shake off this strange lethargy that enthralled me and looked about for some weapon, but finding none, got me down the ladder (and marvellous clumsy about it) and reaching; the deck stumbled more than once over stiffening forms that sprawled across my way. Here and there a battle lanthorn yet glimmered, casting its uncertain beam on writhen legs, on wide-tossed arms and shapes that seemed to stir in the gloom; and beholding so many dead, I marvelled to find myself thus unharmed, though, as I traversed this littered deck, its ghastliness dim-lit by these flickering lanthorns and the moon's unearthly radiance, it seemed more than ever that I walked within a dream, whiles the battle clamoured ever more loud. Once I paused to twist a boarding-axe from stiffening fingers, and, being come into the waist of the ship, found myself beside the main hatchway and leaned there to stare up at the reeling fray on the forecastle where pike darted, axe whirled, sword smote and the battle roared amain in angry summons. But as I turned obedient to get me into this desperate fray, I heard a low and feverish muttering and following this evil sound came upon one who lay amid the wreckage of a gun, and bending above the man knew him for Diccon the quartermaster.