We numbered two hundred, as I have said, but the Somalis must have mustered two thousand at least, if they had a man there.
Twice we advanced to the attack, twice we were forced to fall back before the withering flight of bullets that met us face to face from every hole and corner of that infernal stockade; though Captain Hankey bravely walked right up to the timber work till he almost touched it, a revolver in either hand, which he fired alternately at the beggars!
But, the captain got a big matchlock ball through both his legs, the missile having been discharged at him as he turned sideways, with a “Follow me, lads!” to cheer us on.
He was not licked yet, though; for, as Larrikins stooped over him to lift him up, ‘old Hankey Pankey’ got his arm round his neck and climbed up on to him pick-a-back, Larry highly delighted at the job, he and the captain then advancing again to the assault.
In the meantime, Mr Dabchick had brought up one of our little nine-pounder boat-guns which had stuck in the rear and blew in part of the palisading on the left of the stockade, when he and a lot of us made a desperate charge to storm the entrenchment.
Poor little Dabby, though, was shot dead while entering the breach the shell of our nine-pounder had made in the outer palisade that protected the Arab defences; and then, finding a second fence composed of similar baulks of timber in front of us, as strong as that we had surmounted, and that the fire of the Somalis increased the nearer we got to them, our chaps, staggered by the fall of poor Dabby, I must confess it, all at once began to cut and run!