The String of Pearls (1850), p. 688

the report might be seen and heard from the shore. The pistol was heavily mounted with brass at the butt-end of it.
"Down!" said Todd. "Down!"
He struck the clambering, half-drowned man upon the head, and with a shriek he fell backwards into the water and disappeared. In another moment Todd felt a pair of arms twining round him, and a voice cried—
"Murderer, I have you now! You cannot shake me off!"
Todd made an effort, but, in truth, those wet and clinging arms held to him like fate.
"Fool," he said. "You will find drowning the easiest death for you to meet."
"Help—help! murder!" shouted his assailant.
The pistol was still in Todd's grasp. With a devilish ingenuity, he thrust the barrel of it under his arm and felt that it touched his assailant. He pulled the trigger, and then he and the man who held him fell to the bottom of the barge together.
Todd kicked and plunged until he got uppermost, and then he felt for the throat of the other, and when he got a clutch of it he held it with a gripe of iron.
"Fool," he said. "Did you think that one driven to such desperation as I am, would be conquered so easily?"
There was no reply. Todd lifted up the head of the man, and it hung limply and flaccidly from the neck. He was quite dead. The pistol-bullet had gone through his heart, and death was instantaneous.
"Another one," said Todd, as he sprang to his feet and stood upon the dead body. "Another one sacrificed to my vengeance. Let those only interfere with me who are tired of life."
He placed his hand to his ear now, to listen if there were any indications of others of the boat's crew stirring; but all was still. No sound, save the lazy ripple of the tide past the old barge on which he was, met his ears.
"It is over," he said. "It is quite over now. That one great danger is past now."
The rain began to fall quicker, and splashed upon the half deck of the barge. Todd felt that he was thoroughly wet through; but all minor ills he could now laugh at, that he had escaped the one great peril of capture. He felt that his life had hung upon a thread, and that only the recent accident had saved him; for to be captured, was to him equivalent to death.
"All gone!" he whispered. "They are all gone! Well—well! They would have dragged me to a prison, and then to a scaffold! Self-defence is a sound principle, and for that I have fought!"
A sudden gust of wind got up at that moment, and came howling past Todd, and ruffling upon the surface of the river; but all was still around the barge. There was now no cry for mercy—no shout for help—no bubbling shriek of some swimmer, who was yet sinking to death, as the waters closed over him.
"Yes," said Todd, as his long hair blew out like snakes in the wind, "I am alone here now. They are all dead, and I could do it again if it had to be done."

CHAPTER CLXII.
TODD IS AT SEA, AND GETS ON INDIFFERENTLY.—THE STORM.

It seemed now as though the lull in the weather was over; for after that one gust of wind, there came others; and in the course of a very short time, indeed, the surface of the water was much agitated, and such a howling noise was kept up by the wind, that Todd thought every moment that he heard the voices of his foes.
"What am I to do now?" he said. "Oh. what am I to do? I dare not