If they had only taken the offensive and attacked us I should have whooped with the joy of fighting—that cargo of rifles down below was worth fighting for—but they would not.
Dobson it was who settled the question.
With a "Look out, sir, I'm going for 'em", he took the opportunity of a moment when the dhow was on a level keel and rushed into the middle of them. He seized the burnous over the nakhoda's head, and before that malignant brute could get his hands free he had hauled the loose folds across his throat, choked him, pulled him off the poop on to the deck, and began hauling him for'ard.
In a trice those Arabs were on their feet, throwing off their upper clothes, and snarling like a lot of dogs. Two of them caught Dobson's foot, and tried to throw him. Wiggins and I were among them in a moment, hitting right and left, until my knuckles were bleeding. In a jumbling, struggling crowd, with that dog barking and biting round us, we were thrown from port to starboard, as the dhow rolled; but somehow or other we managed to get between the Arabs and Dobson, who had never let go of the old man's neck.
A wave washed over us, and for a moment we had a breathing spell, and in that moment I saw the nakhoda free one of his hands. He had a knife in it, so I grabbed his arm, forced his wrist back, and gave him a blow on the back of his head with the butt end of my revolver which knocked him as limp as a rag.
As he fell, the crew, like one man, bent down to the folds round their waists, drawing knives. Two of them had pistols, and before either Wiggins, Dobson, or myself could use our revolvers they had fired, and a bullet had whizzed past my head.
A pistol went off behind me; one of the Arabs—one of the two with pistols—threw up his hands and fell. The others yelled and rushed for us; but we were ready now. I chose the second man with a pistol, fired, and missed him; another shot from behind knocked him over. I saw two more fall. I got a slice over the head, the man who did it being knocked down by Dobson before I knew he had touched me, and the rest had had enough of it, and scrambled for'ard. The dog tried to follow them, but made the mistake of attempting a last snap at Dobson's leg. Before you could wink, that little cur was whirling through the air overboard. In two minutes after Dobson had garrotted their nakhoda, we were masters of that dhow.
I felt rather rocky, and sat down, holding on to a rope, with blood simply pouring over my ear and shoulder.
Then it was that I saw Jaffa. I had forgotten him. He was standing behind me, calmly re-charging a Mauser pistol in the most matter-of-fact way possible, and I realized that it was his shots that had killed the two pistol men. I tried to show that I was grateful. "Well shot, Jaffa!" I shouted. "Tell them to take their dead and wounded for'ard."
Presently the six Arabs still on their legs crawled and slunk aft, and dragged the two dead bodies away, helping the wounded man along the deck, and then sitting in a ring round the foot of the mast, motionless and mute as bats, drawing their cloaks round them to protect them from the seas.