"'Quick, Billy—quick! Damme, but we'll risk it!' cried Sir John, snatching up his spare gun. 'If we make a mess of it,' says he, 'plug a bullet into one of the powder kegs! Understand?' says he.
"'Sakes alive, master!' says I. 'You bain't a-going to clamber down that gizzy-dizzy place sure 'nuff!'
"'Why, o' course I be,' says he, and already he had his legs over and was lowering himself. 'Turn on your back, stick out your heels, and hold your gun wide of you, so,' says he; 'and you'll come to no harm.'
"Well, as it happened, I didn't. Not for a hundred pound would I go down that cliff again in cold blood, and my stomach turns wambly in bed o' nights when I dream of it. But down it I went on the flat of my back with my heels out, as Sir John recommended, and with my eyes shut, about which he'd said nothing. I felt my jacket go rip from tail to collar—you can see the rent in it for yourselves—and my shirt likewise; and what happened to the seat of my breeches 'twould be a scandal to mention. But in two shakes or less we were at the bottom of the cliff together, safe and sound, and not a moment too soon, neither: for as I picked myself up I saw Sir John lurch across and catch up the burning fuse that lay close alongside one of the powder kegs. Whereby, although the danger was no sooner seen than over, I pretty near turned sick on the spot.
"But Sir John gave me no time. 'Hooray!' he sings out. 'Help me to slew this blessed gun round, and we'll sink boat and all for 'em unless she slips her moorings quick!'
"Well, sir, that was the masterpiece. We heaved and strained, and inside of two minutes we had it trained upon the gunboat. The men that had quitted the platform were down by the shore before this; and a dozen had pushed their boat off and sat in her, some pulling, others backing, and all jabbering and disputing whether to return and take off the five or six that stood in a huddle by the water's edge and were crying out not to be left behind. And mean time on the gunboat some were shouting to 'em not to be a pack of cowards—for the crew on board could see us on the platform (which the others couldn't) and that we were only two—and others were running to cut her cable, seeing the gun trained on 'em and not staying to think that the wind was light and the current setting straight onshore. And in the midst of this Sir John finds a fresh fuse, and lights it from the old one, and bang! says we.
"It took her plump in the stern-works, knocking her wheel and taffrail to flinders and ripping out a fair six feet of her larboard bulwarks. This much I saw while the smoke cleared; but Sir John was already calling for the reload. The Genoese by good luck had left a rammer; and the pair of us had charged her and were pushing home shot number two as merry as crickets, when we heard a horn blown on the hill above us, and at the same instant spied a body of Corsicans on the beach below, marching towards us from the town.
"Well, Sir John decided that we might just as well have a second shot at the boat while our hand was in; and so we did, but trained it too high in our excitement and did no damage beyond knocking a hole in her mainsail. And our ears hadn't lost the noise of it before a man put his head over the cliff above and spoke to us very politely in Corsican.
"He seemed to be asking the way down; for Sir John pointed to the way we had come. Whereby he laughed and shook his head. And a dozen others that had gathered beside him looked down too and laughed and waved their hands to us. By-and-by they went off, still waving, to look for a better way down: but they took a good twenty minutes to reach us, and before this the gunboat had drifted close upon the rocks and no hope for it but to surrender to the party marching along the beach and now close at hand.
"Well, sirs, the upshot was that this party, which had marched out for a forlorn hope, took the gunboat and her crew as easily as a man gathers mushrooms. And the rest of the boats, dispirited belike, sheered off after another hour's banging and left the roadstead in peace. But, while this was happening, the party on the cliffs had worked their way down to our rock by a sheep-track on the western side, and the first man to salute us was the man who had first spoken to us from the top of the cliff: and this, let me tell you, was no less a person than the General himself."