Morley snatched up the double-barrelled gun which Mr. Basset had just reloaded. Kneeling down, he levelled it steadily through the taffrail, and shot both down in quick succession—a strange and wild emotion coming over him as he saw them fall, and beat the earth with their hands and feet. This cooled the ardour of five or six others, who followed, for he saw them plunge down among the mangroves, where they lay flat in concealment.
At that moment, a Hovah, in a crimson shirt, who had clambered, all wet and dripping, up the mizzen chains, launched an assegai at Morley, which skinned his right ear, and stuck quivering in the deck, near the coaming of the main-hatch. He then proceeded to scramble on board, with his sharp creese in his teeth, and a savage glitter in his eye, when Morley clubbed the double-barrelled gun. and swinging it aloft at the full stretch of his arms, dealt the Hovah a blow on his hard caput, which tumbled him prone into the water; but the gun was destroyed, as it snapped in two at the small part of the butt.
Morley rushed back to rejoin his friends at the carronades; but found poor Noah grappling with a gigantic Malay, who had dropped over the bulwark near the starboard quarter, where they were rolling over each other, Noah swearing, and the Malay biting and howling, till the former, grasping the long, tawny ears of the latter, rings and all, dashed his head thrice on the deck, when he stunned, and then flung him overboard.
At that moment an arrow, which all feared might be poisoned—whistled through Noah's cheeks, knocking out a couple of his few remaining teeth; but with a pistol he shot dead the archer, who was nestling among the mangroves.
So far as the eight unfortunates on the deck of the Hermione could judge, they had been attacked by not less than eighty men!
Now the two proas were close alongside; another moment would have seen the savage Malays swarming in scores up the bulwarks and over the decks; but just as a groan of dismay simultaneously burst from the few devoted defenders of the Hermione, her head warp was slashed through by creeses, and she suddenly fell away round before the south-west breeze, with her bow towards the sea, thus increasing the distance between her assailants and herself by the whole length of her stern warp, at a moment when, all the Malays were in the act of standing up to leap on board, and as she so swerved away, she went right ashore, broadside on, amongst the mangroves, with all her four carronades pointed to the land, leaving her starboard side unprotected against the yelling occupants of the two remaining proas.
"God help us!" cried poor Captain Phillips, in despair; "all is over now!"
CHAPTER XXIII.
"WE'LL GO TO SEA NO MORE!"
The despairing exclamation of the worthy captain had a very singular sequel, for scarcely had it left his lips, and just when the paddlers were again scooping away, as, with yells of exulting fury, the Malays proceeded after the Hermione; just when those who were ashore were forcing a passage to her through the jungle, and when the full term of another minute would have closed the whole catastrophe—lo! with all the suddenness of a spectral illusion, or of the Flying Dutchman's famous craft, a noble-looking ship, all a cloud of canvas, white as snow, swept round the verge of the cliff, and lay to, right off the mouth off the creek.