The sailor's knife was in his belt-pouch, where he carried it over the
hip. As he leaned down to look through a crack in the low door, he felt
a hand from the gloom behind touch him.
Instinctively he felt for his knife, and it was gone.
"Captain," cried the voice of the dejected mulatto, as the door of the
pen flew open and the bandit-looking stranger appeared with the lamp,
"there's a white man here going to kill you. I've taken his knife from
him and saved your life. It's a rebellion, captain!"
"Help! Patty! Joe!" cried the man, with a loud voice, as Jimmy Phoebus
threw himself upon him and extinguished the lamp, and the two powerful
men rolled on the floor together in a grip of mortal combat.
Phoebus was a man of great power, but his antagonist was strong and
slippery, too, and a spirited rough-and-tumble fighter.
The pungy captain was on top, the bandit man locked him fast in his arms
and legs, and tried to stab him in the side, as Phoebus felt the
handle of a clasp-knife, which seemed slow to obey its spring, strike
him repeatedly all round the groin, in strokes that would have killed,
inflicted by the blade.
Phoebus attempted to drag the man to the hatchway and force him down
it, while the two negro assistants of Phoebus beat down the negro
traitor with their chains, and searched him vainly for the knife he had
filched.
At last Phoebus prevailed, and his antagonist rolled down the open
hatchway, seven feet or more, still keeping his desperate hold on
Phoebus, and dragging him along; and both might have cracked their
skulls but for a woman just in the act of hurrying up the ladder,
against whom their two bodies pitched and were cushioned upon her.
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