Our flotilla was in a state of utter confusion and demoralization. And well might its members be alarmed. The enemy was about to attack from under the water!
In another instant many of the canoes had been capsized and were filled with water. In less than a minute only two of our twenty boats were still afloat, and their occupants were paddling for life down the centre of the Grand Canal, in a direction apart from the ship.
In the water, a deadly hand-to-hand contest was in progress. A few of our men had effected lodgment on the floating spar, after the soft and tender bottoms of their boats had been ripped open by the diving Sargassons. But their respite from death was very short. They were set upon by the insurgents and slaughtered to a man.
The only members of our party left at the end of five minutes were the four men who had escaped in the two uninjured boats!
All the others had died, gallantly.
Through my glass I could see one poor fellow still clutching the spar in the agonies of death. He was ruthlessly stabbed, but it required the combined strength of two men of the enemy to disengage his arms from the spar.
Before we on board had recovered from the horror of this spectacle, the terrible steel-capped spar was under way, headed directly toward us.
Our defense had utterly failed!
Something must be done at once. It was impossible to move the vessel. I recollected, during my imprisonment, to have slept upon a large rope fender. I sprang down the companionway, seized this in my arms, attached a cord to it and swung it over the side of the ship, about the point I expected the spar to strike.
Watching narrowly its approach, I shifted it so that the terrible blow of the spar was received directly in the centre of the coil of rope. Though the shock made the old ship quiver, no damage was done. The insurgent chief was very much nonplussed at the failure of the battering ram, and slowly withdrew the spar for a second attempt. The probability is that, had his full equipment of forty swimmers been behind that engine of assault, the fender would not have sufficed. But in the battle Hansko Yap had lost eleven men, for I was only able to count twenty-nine heads in the water.