The first the Breezies knew of its commencement was from a fusillade delivered from the bush. Although such splendid swordsmen, the Arabs are not good marksmen, and their rifles are usually bad. In this case it appeared they had determined to make sure. Not fewer than twenty rifles must have been aimed at the cocoa-nut palm, hidden in which was our little black sentry.
Next moment his body fell at their feet with a dull and awful splashing thud, the sound of which could never be forgotten.
The Arabs attacked about five minutes after, and from a side of the barracoon--so wily were they--that the white men fancied they would never attempt to scale.
Before they had fired two volleys they were over the palisade, not in scores but in hundreds apparently. One more rifle volley was filed, then the Breezies advanced at the double to meet the foe.
I cannot describe that terrible mêlée. The charge of those sword-armed Arabs seemed like "the shock of Hell" that Scott speaks of in Marmion.
Sword in hand, McTavish was in it. He was stunned very early in the engagement by a blow from something, he knew not what, and fell between two dead men, namely, an Arab whom Kep's sword had gone clean through, and a freed slave that the Arab had cloven to the chin.
When the surgeon recovered consciousness and looked up, the tide of battle had rolled away from him. Strangely enough, as he gazed for a few moments, still confused and bewildered, at the fearful fight that was raging, a passage from Scott kept running in his mind and memory--
They close in clouds of smoke and dust,
With sword-sway and with lance's thrust,
And such a yell was there,
Of sudden and portentous birth,
As if men fought upon this earth,
And fiends in upper air.
While he was staggering to his feet, a sound fell upon his ears that told him they were saved. It was the rolling, rattling sound of a maxim gun.
The Arabs heard it too. Next minute the great gate of the barracoon was burst open, and not twenty bluejackets, but fully a hundred came pouring in. That brave British cheer, as the bluejackets came rushing onwards, cutlass in hand, was the signal for the enemy's flight.