The battle now raged with terrible fury. Boat after boat of the enemy had her outriggers hacked away and got capsized.
Harry was here, there, and everywhere, shouting orders, guiding and encouraging his fleet.
He was a fleet in himself—the very genius of the battle.
The commander of the hostile canoes was a huge savage, who stood in the bows of a large canoe and shouted his orders in a voice so sonorous that it was heard everywhere. He seemed to bear a charmed life, for again and again Somali Jack fired at him, but no bullet found a billet in that fierce giant’s body.
But canoe after canoe—by this captain’s orders—was detached to attack Harry’s boat, for well the fellow knew that could he but silence our hero the battle would soon be won.
Each and all of the boats sent on this detached duty came to grief. In vain spears were hurled towards the skiff, for Jack’s rifle instantly came into deadly play, and at close quarters he liberally drilled them by twos.
On the other hand, the archers were not idle, and any boat that got out of line was their particular prey.
The fiercest fighting of all raged around the king’s bark with its giant seamen. Its captain was a man of herculean strength and all a savage’s wild ferocity. Wielding aloft a mighty battle-axe he dealt death and destruction around him wherever he went. Many a canoe the barge capsized. Many were the attempts made to board her, not only from the warlike canoes, but by the drowning wretches in the lake; the latter were ruthlessly hacked down, the former hurled back bleeding into the water or into their dug-outs.
At last the barge found itself inside the enemy’s line, and alongside the stalwart commander’s big canoe.
In a moment the outriggers at one side were broken into splinters, then the giants found themselves face to face, Kara-Kara’s naval commander having leaped, panther-fashion, on board the barge and closed with its captain.