When offered a weapon, Ching Wang only smiled that innocent bland smile of his, producing his own long knife, that had a blade like an American bowie, being over a foot long and with a double edge.
“Me one piecee in tyfong tummee tummee, chop chop, pijjin!” he said, brandishing the awful blade in a way that I’m sure the “kyfongs,” the Chinese term for pirates, would not relish, especially in such friendly relation with their “tummee tummees.”
All the crew being now armed, the captain and Mr Mackay disposed them in parties about the deck and forecastle to windward, so as best to oppose the pirates’ attack; while the men provided with the Enfield rifles were placed in the tops, with the bullets and powder for ammunition when their cartridges ran short. Tim Rooney took his station with Mr Mackay on the poop, from which the advancing pirates could best be picked off, and where also were gathered the captain, as a matter of course; Mr Saunders, who carried an old single-barrel pistol with a heavy lock, which the second mate intended to make more use of as a club than to shoot with; and Tom Jerrold and Sam Weeks, as well as myself—Sam being sadly jealous of Tom and I from the fact of our having revolvers, while he, coming too late after they’d all been distributed, had to be contented with a marlin-spike—poor Sammy!
It was thus that we all awaited the attack, every man Jack of us being at his specially appointed post and on the alert; when the pirates—after pounding away at us a long time at a distance, with the result of neither wounding a soul on board nor damaging the ship very materially, none of the shot penetrating her hull between wind and water, the only thing we had to fear—at length mustered up courage enough to give up their rather unremunerative game of “long bowls” and come to close quarters.
I had got quite accustomed now to the rushing sound of round shot in the air and the waspish phit phitting of rifle bullets past my head; and I was filled with a wild excitement that made my heart pant, as I stood on the poop between Mr Mackay and Tim Rooney.
These two were peppering away at the leading proa and the junks, as they paddled in hastily towards the ship with their long double-banked sweeps, anxious to get in close alongside and so to be sheltered by our hull from the murderous and rapid fire which the wielders of the Martini-Henrys rained on them.
But every bullet found a billet in some pirate breast sooner or later, one of the villainous desperadoes falling over his oar here and another dropping down on the bamboo deck of a junk there; while, occasionally, some wretch would tumble overboard with a wild yell, in answer to the ping of the rifle, shot through the heart as dead as a herring, and going down to his grave amongst the fishes in Neptune’s coral caverns below!
“There’s that scoundrel of a fellow in the red sash again,” cried Mr Mackay, when the Malay proa, which still led the van, was only about half a cable’s length off. “There he is, Rooney,—do you see him?”
“Aye, bad cess to the black divil, I say him well enough, sorr,” returned Tim, carefully putting a fresh cartridge into the chamber of his weapon. “Begorra, I thought I’d kilt the beggar a dozen toimes alriddy; but he’s got the luck of ould Nick, an’ sames to save his skin somehow or ither. Here goes for him ag’in—take that now, ye ould thaife!”
“Ping!”