The yells were now appalling, the scene terrible, and yet withal most picturesque and striking.
The savage rabble in these proas were the woolly-headed Madecasses, who are partly of African descent; but all their leaders—and several appeared in each proa—were olive-skinned men, Hovahs, who are supposed to be of purer blood, and are viewed by the people of Madagascar somewhat as the Normans were by the Anglo-Saxons.
These men wore tunics of scarlet silk, like those of the Chinese, girt by sashes or belts; but their negro followers were naked, a few only having clothes about their middle, or wearing the ordinary garment of the Madecasses, which is made of bark, boiled and beaten, and shaped like a flour-sack, with a hole for the head, and four others for the legs and arms.
All wore chains, ear-rings, and bracelets of crystal cornelian, and even gold, and many were armed with assegais, headed like spears, with long, sharp, iron points; many had bucklers of hard wood, covered with hides. Some had ten or twelve javelins each; a few had clumsy old muskets, fortunately much addicted to hanging fire; and all had the native creese—a long, wavy, double-edged dagger. When we add to this equipment their black, ferocious faces, their shrill yells and diabolical activity, their white, glistening teeth, their glaring eyeballs, and whole tout ensemble, the reader may imagine the scene presented at this crisis in the mangrove creek.
The explosion of the first carronade had drawn a simultaneous shriek and shudder from the two girls, and their old nurse, in the cabin, and a cheer from their eight devoted friends on deck, while with it, and with every future discharge, the pintados, the black paroquets, the spoonbills, and the turtle-doves flew in screaming coveys out of the jungle.
"Depress your muzzles!" cried Noah, who had, by tacit consent apparently, constituted himself master-gunner; "they're nearing us, mates."
"Another dose of broken bottles; they make first-rate grape and canister," added Morrison.
"Crouch down—crouch down—here's a volley of something coming!" shouted Captain Phillips, from his gun, as four or five musket-bullets crashed through the bulwarks, and a number of arrows or javelins and assegais, whistled harmlessly over their heads, and fell pattering on the starboard side of the deck, as fast as the survivors of the shattered proas scrambled ashore, and began to use their weapons.
"The warp—the starn warp!" shouted Noah, as with muzzle depressed, he fired his carronade again; "pick off some o' those d——d heathen niggers afore they cuts it, some one."
Two savages had already reached the warp, which was carried through the taffrail to the kedge, and were proceeding to slash through the strands of the strong Manilla, hewing with their creeses, and, had they done so, the ship must have swerved round, and gone ashore, broadside on.