United States or Andorra ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
For a moment he stood swaying, steadying himself with outstretched hand against the rail of the ladder. "Thought I'd better bring him along," he gasped. "Turret's knocked to hell.... He's still alive, but he's broken all to little bits inside ... I can feel him... Morton, snottie of my turret ..."
Whirling their knives, yelling one to the other, some slipping on the slimy weed, others, more sure in foothold, making for the turret's height, the mutineers fell upon us like a hurricane and so beat us down that my heart sank away from me, and I said that the house was lost and little Ruth Bellenden their prey at last. "Stand by the gun by the gun to the last, if you love your life!"
The deck outside, what I could see of it, was vacant. Balch lay dead close outside the chart room door. The bodies of Blackstone and the course master had been removed from the turret window. As a forward lookout, one of Miko's men was on duty in the nearby tower. Hahn was at the turret's controls. The ship was under orderly handling, heading back upon a new course. For the Earth? The Moon?
It was during this period that we were hit seventeen times by heavy shell, though, in my position in the after torpedo control tower, I only realized one hit had taken place, which was when a shell plunged into the after turret and, blowing the roof off, killed every member of the turret's crew.
He swung his rifle by the barrel as he spoke the words and, bringing it down crash, he cleaved the skull of a great ruffian whose face was already glowering down from the turret's rim. For Peter knew well what I was about when I leapt from the turret and charged down upon the mutineers. A dozen men, perchance, had gained foothold on the rock.
Regardless of the wintry storm, the murderer spurred on the noble animal he rode; he had no purpose in the flight, he had arranged no plan of escape; unused to act for himself, his movements were all uncertainty: now he reined in his horse, and listened as if for pursuers, but none came: now fancying he heard the mocking laugh he had so often heard, he dashed forward, as if the furies were behind him; the storm meanwhile increased in its violence, he felt it not; the warfare of the elements was calmness to the tumult of his heart; he looked up to the heavens, but there on the edge of every lurid cloud, he saw it, he saw them; not one but hundreds: maidens with stony blue eyes, all glaring upon him; he looked upon the earth, a gibbering madman was running by his side, howling and hooting in the wind; now so near as almost to touch him: now hundreds of yards away, but always the same; behind him with his ghastly mangled head, came the form of his last victim, forward! forward! while the crashing thunder pealed above his head; he shook his impious hand against the sky, and still darted onward, till the horse stopped, snorting on the beach; and there as the great sea, rolled in foaming and turgid, there, he saw it plain in yon glare of livid lightning, on the crest of every curling wave, a dark haired lady lay, glaring at him with eyes that looked like coals of fire; a monster wave came rolling in, and the frightened horse turned, and seizing the bit between his teeth sped homeward, but still he saw them in the clouds behind, before, beckoning to him, calling to him, in the voice of the great wind; on, on, towards the castle gates, he looked up to the battlements; they were there, on every turret's top, on every pointed arch, from every window, visible to him, as though it had been bright daylight he saw them.
Word Of The Day