They went their best for Dabby, seeing that he was our leader; but the plucky little chap, with his sword in one hand and a revolver in the other, stood amongst them as brave as you please, cutting at this one, peppering at that, and guarding in some miraculous way a hundred blows aimed at him from every side.
Don’t think, though, that we left our officer to battle against the Arabs single-handed.
Not we.
I do not say it in any boasting sense, will you please recollect, for I am sure that no one who knows me would accuse me of being a braggart; but, as I am telling of events that really happened, I must speak the truth, and so to do this I am obliged to say that I was one of the first to spring to Mr Dabchick’s side after he boarded the dhow, Larrikins coming next with a mad leap that nearly scrunched my toes off, and then the coxswain of the cutter and the rest of the chaps.
Striking out with our cutlasses, we soon cleared a circle round the lieutenant; and then, forming up like a breastwork in front of him, we rushed at the remaining Somalis in the bows, hurling over into the sea, with the impetus of our charge, those whom we did not cut down outright, or settle with a thrust from our straight-edged blades.
The crew of our other boat had meanwhile climbed aboard amidships, where they soon despatched the rest of the Arabs holding out there, a well-aimed shot from the rifle of Larrikins potting the green-turbaned chief of the gang.
With his fall, all opposition now ceased, and we took possession of our prize; some twenty odd Somalis only remaining in our hands as prisoners, the others having been all slain in open combat, or drowned when they tumbled over the side.
We had not escaped scatheless either, for we lost three men in our boat, besides Bartlett the bowman, and had five wounded, the coxswain seriously; while Larrikins had a bullet through the fleshy part of his forearm, and I received a knock on the knee from a friendly Arab which made me limp for more than a month afterwards.
The second cutter, however, came off the worst, Mr Doyle, our junior lieutenant, having been shot through the lungs with a jagged matchlock ball in the desperate hand-to-hand fighting that ensued on her first attack, which the Somalis repulsed, twelve more men of her complement, besides, being either killed or wounded.