“There is really no good reason why we should gratify your whim,” said Paradise, still amused.  “But it will serve to pass the time.  We will fight you, one by one.”

“And if I win?”

He laughed.  “Then, on the honor of a gentleman, you are Kirby and our captain.  If you lose, we will leave you where you stand for the gulls to bury.”

“A bargain,” I said, and drew my sword.

“I first!” roared Red Gil.  “God’s wounds! there will need no second!”

As he spoke he swung his cutlass and made an arc of blue flame.  The weapon became in his hands a flail, terrible to look upon, making lightnings and whistling in the air, but in reality not so deadly as it seemed.  The fury of his onslaught would have beaten down the guard of any mere swordsman, but that I was not.  A man, knowing his weakness and insufficiency in many and many a thing, may yet know his strength in one or two and his modesty take no hurt.  I was ever master of my sword, and it did the thing I would have it do.  Moreover, as I fought I saw her as I had last seen her, standing against the bank of sand, her dark hair, half braided, drawn over her bosom and hanging to her knees.  Her eyes haunted me, and my lips yet felt the touch of her hand.  I fought well,—­how well the lapsing of oaths and laughter into breathless silence bore witness.

The ruffian against whom I was pitted began to draw his breath in gasps.  He was a scoundrel not fit to die, less fit to live, unworthy of a gentleman’s steel.  I presently ran him through with as little compunction and as great a desire to be quit of a dirty job as if he had been a mad dog.  He fell, and a little later, while I was engaged with the Spaniard, his soul went to that hell which had long gaped for it.  To those his companions his death was as slight a thing as would theirs have been to him.  In the eyes of the two remaining would-be leaders he was a stumbling-block removed, and to the squatting, open-mouthed commonalty his taking off weighed not a feather against the solid entertainment I was affording them.  I was now a better man than Red Gil,—­that was all.

The Spaniard was a more formidable antagonist.  The best blade of Lima was by no means to be despised:  but Lima is a small place, and its blades can be numbered.  The sword that for three years had been counted the best in all the Low Countries was its better.  But I fought fasting and for the second time that morning, so maybe the odds were not so great.  I wounded him slightly, and presently succeeded in disarming him.  “Am I Kirby?” I demanded, with my point at his breast.

“Kirby, of course, senor,” he answered with a sour smile, his eyes upon the gleaming blade.

I lowered my point and we bowed to each other, after which he sat down upon the sand and applied himself to stanching the bleeding from his wound.  The pirate ring gave him no attention, but stared at me instead.  I was now a better man than the Spaniard.