Further Adventures - Pirate Fight

Barbados, with a cry, sprang backward, and the señorita slumped to the deck at the foot of the mast. And Zorro realized in that instant that he had stepped forward too far and had been seen. Sanchez gave a cry and started toward him. The pirates whirled from the rail to look. Barbados saw him.

"'Tis Zorro!" Barbados shrieked. "After him! Fetch him to me alive! An extra share of loot to the man who gets him!"

It was the promise of loot that drove them on. They shrieked and rushed forward. Zorro put the blade of his sword between his teeth and darted up into the rigging. And then began a fight the like of which the pirates never had seen before. Zorro seemed scarcely human. Up the rigging he went like a monkey. He sprang from spar to spar.

Down the ratlines he rushed, down the ropes he slid.

Now and then he clashed with one of the pirates, and always the sword of Zorro darted in and out, and a wounded man was left behind.

"Seize him!" Barbados shrieked. "After him, dogs! Is one man to hold you off forever? Do not slay him! An extra share of loot –"

Zorro struck the deck and darted across it. Sanchez retreated before his darting blade. He pierced the breast of a pirate who stepped before him, hurled another aside, sprang to the mast, and recovered his dagger.

He stooped for an instant, and pressed the lips of the señorita to his own, and dashed on.

Now, he was cornered, and now he fought his way to freedom. A dagger whirled past his head and buried itself in the deck beyond. Into the rigging he went again, up the ratlines, out along a spar.

They followed him, and he put his sword into its scabbard and sprang. Far below he caught another spar, ran to the mast, started downward again. One glance he gave at the approaching ship. His friends were gaining, but they still were far away.

Again they had him cornered, and again he escaped them by jumping to the deck below. He dashed around the deck cabin, met and defeated another man with a single clash of blades, and was at the rail.

There was grave danger on the deck, he knew, and so he went aloft once more. Up and up he went, while Barbados and Sanchez shrieked to the others to follow and get him.

"Alive!" I want him alive!" Barbados screeched.

Another spring from spar to spar. Zorro almost missed because of the rolling of the ship. But he caught and clung on, and scrambled to a place of safety. In toward the mast he hurried.


- The Further Adventures of Zorro, Chapter 11