“They’re coming now, men,” said he coolly. To his ears the high and rising tumult from the flotilla made music. The lust of war was in him. For a moment he peered intently at the paddlemen once more bending to their work; the brandished krises and long spears; the spattering of bullets all along the water.
“Let ’em come!” he cried, laughing once more. “With hot lead and boiling water and cold steel, I reckon we’re ready for ’em. Steady’s the word, boys! They’re coming—give ’em hell!”
CHAPTER XI
HOME BOUND
Noon witnessed a strange scene in the Straits of Motomolo, a scene of agony and death.
Over the surface of the strait, inborne by the tide, extended a broad field of débris, of shattered planks, bamboos, platted sails.
In mid-scene, sunk on Ulu Salama bar only a few fathoms from where the Silver Fleece had lain, rested the dismantled wreck of the proa. The unpitying sun flooded that wreck—what was left of it after a powder-cask, fitted with fuse, had been hurled aboard by Captain Briggs himself. No living man remained aboard. On the high stern still projecting from the sea—the stern whence a thin waft of smoke still rose against the sky—a few broken, yellow bodies lay half consumed by fire, twisted and hideous.
Of the small canoes, not one remained. Such as had not been capsized and broken up, had lamely paddled back to shore with the few Malays who had survived the guns and cutlasses and brimming kettles of seething water. Corpses lay awash. The sharks no longer quarreled for them. Full-fed on the finest of eating, they hardly snouted at the remnants of the feast.