But while this was going on several other “brave” individuals were engaged, with swords, proving their valour, one against the other.

The doors were all locked, the windows were closed, and the servants’ hall being so far away from the knight’s apartments the noise was not heard.

Curses, not loud but deep, were heard on every side, and the Skeleton Crew looked on with delight, as they saw the blood flowing an all sides, while their chief sat on a high seat, quaffing wine,[Pg 15] and delighted with the bloodthirsty, fiendish work going on around him.

[Pg 15]

It was a terrible feast of blood!

The Skeleton Band hideously grinned and chuckled at the sight of blood around them.

Shouts of pain and death groans were like music in their demon ears; the writhings of several victims, as they hung from the beams above, thrilled them with joy, as, with bony hands, they pointed to them twisting and dangling in the air.

This horrible carnival had lasted long.

The best looking of the females were then carried off by several of the Skeleton Band to some rendezvous near by, with limbs bound and their mouths gagged; but those left behind were hung to the rafters quickly, and without mercy.

This was an annual gory banquet, which the chief of the Skeleton Crew kept up to celebrate his career as the famous Scourge of the Sea!

He and most of his crew had come with the firm resolve to massacre every one in Darlington Hall.

This was but the commencement of their horrible sport.

Well might the Skeleton Crew and their charmed Phantom Ship have long been the terror and fright of all the coasts and seas around.

Many a family had been slaughtered in cold blood on shore, and many a good ship’s company mangled and their vessels plundered and sunk by these aptly termed Demons of the Deep.

But they had not come to Darlington Hall solely to satisfy their thirst for blood.

It was the villain and murderer, Redgill, they assisted.

He hated Wildfire Ned with bitter animosity because he 

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