"How now, Diccon?" I questioned, and wondered to hear my voice so strange and muffled.
"Dying!" said he. "Dying--aye, am I! And wi' two thousand doubloons hid away as I shall ne'er ha' the spending on--oh, for a mouthful o' water--two thousand--a pike-thrust i' the midriff is an--ill thing yet--'tis better than--noose and tar and gibbet--yet 'tis hard to die wi' two thousand doubloons unspent--oh, lad, I parch--I burn already--water--a mouthful for a dying man--"
So came I to the water-butt that stood abaft the hatchway, and filling a pannikin that chanced there with some of the little water that remained, hastened back to Diccon, but ere I could reach him he struggled to his knees and flinging arms aloft uttered a great cry and sank upon his face. Then, finding him verily dead, I drank the water myself and, though lukewarm and none too sweet, felt myself much refreshed and strengthened thereby and the numbness of mind and body abated somewhat.
And yet, as I knelt thus, chancing to lift my eyes from the dead man before me, it seemed that verily I must be dreaming after all, for there, all daintily bedight in purple gown, I beheld a fine lady tripping lightly among these mangled dead; crouched in the shadow of the bulwark I watched this approaching figure; then I saw it was Joanna, saw the moon glint evilly on the pistol she bore ere she vanished down the hatchway. And now, reading her fell purpose, I rose to my feet and stole after her down into the 'tween-decks.
An evil place this, crowded with forms that moaned and writhed fitfully in the light of the lanthorns that burned dimly here and there, a place foul with blood and reeking with the fumes of burnt powder, but I heeded only the graceful shape that flitted on before; once she paused to reach down a lanthorn and to open the slide, and when she went on again, flames smouldered behind her and as often as she stayed to set these fires a-going, I stayed to extinguish them as well as I might ere I hasted after her. At last she paused to unlock a door and presently her voice reached me, high and imperious as ever: "Greeting, Don Federigo! The ship's afire and 'tis an ill thing to burn, so do I bring you kinder death!"
Creeping to the door of this lock-up, I saw she had set down the lanthorn and stood above the poor fettered captive, the pistol in her hand.
"The Señorita is infinitely generous," said Don Federigo in his courtly fashion; then, or ever she might level the weapon, I had seized and wrested it from her grasp. Crying out in passionate fury, she turned and leapt at me.