Barthelemy pursued with both his ships.
The fugitive flung overboard all her ballast and finally even her guns, by which sacrifice she succeeded in reaching the shore before the other ships could interpose.
A throng of Calabrian negroes stood on the land watching the fight.
Kennedy hastily ordered his men into the boats and escaped to the shore. "Not even that will save you," said Barthelemy, ordering the largest boat to be lowered. He had eight guns placed in it, entered himself with forty of his men, and commanded them to row to the beach.
Kennedy saw that Barthelemy intended to land and began to tell the negroes, with loud cries, that he was a monster who had come to conquer their land and burn their dwellings. They must on no account permit him to come ashore.
The shouts of the negroes showed that the pirates had succeeded in exciting these savages against their former comrades, and the negroes soon began to greet the boat with a shower of arrows and stones.
"So much the better," murmured Barthelemy. "Two at one blow: traitors and negroes. To-day vengeance will reap a harvest, this is the festival of death. Fire among them."
The guns of the boat roared, scattering death among the blacks, in whose ranks the bombs tore wide openings, and, amid this thunder, forty men landed in the face of ten thousand negroes.
Kennedy and his companions urged the Calabrians to a desperate defence, and they rushed with bloodthirsty fury at the buccaneers, hurling a cloud of arrows and lances.
Only two or three fell wounded by these missiles, the others moved forward in close ranks, aiming at the most prominent leaders in the negro ranks.