“Load your guns, load your guns?” shouted Porpoise. “Don’t trust to them.”
It was fortunate this was done. With terrific cries and yells they for a third time gave way towards us, completely hemming us in, so that some boats going ahead almost stopped the vessel’s way through the water. Keeping up their hideous yells, firing their pistols, and flourishing their scymitars, they flung themselves headlong on board. Many were driven back, but their places were speedily filled by others. The physical power of the cutter’s crew, exerted so long to the utmost stretch, was almost failing, when, far in the offing, to the northward, the bright flash of a gun was seen, followed shortly afterwards by another and another. I pointed them out to Hearty.
“There’s help coming, my lads!” he shouted. “Never fear; but let’s have all the glory of the fight to ourselves, and drive these scoundrels off before it arrives. Huzza, huzza! Back with them! No quarter! Cut them down! Drive them into the sea?”
All this time he was most completely suiting the action to his words. At last some of the pirates saw the flashes.
The morning light was just breaking in the east, for the action had endured far longer than it has taken to describe it. They must have suspected that they foreboded no good to them, and that the sooner they were off the better. Orders were shouted out by the chiefs. Those who could obeyed them, and, leaping back, the boats in a body shoved off from us; but some unfortunate wretches were still clinging to our bulwarks. They fought as they clung with all the fanaticism of Mohammedans; but our seamen made quick work of them, and in less than two minutes not one was left alive. The grey light of dawn showed us the dark boats pulling in-shore, and as the sun arose its early beams lighted up the canvas of a man-of-war brig, close-hauled, laying up towards us. Our people shouted lustily when they saw her; and Hearty, forgetting his wound and his begrimed and war-stained appearance, hurried below to assure his charges of their safety. We quickly recognised the “Zebra,” and were not long in getting within hail of her, when Rullock, accompanied by Bubble, came on board of us, to inquire into the particulars of our adventure.
Old Rullock at first was somewhat inclined to be angry with us for getting so close in-shore, and Will almost pulled his hair off in his vexation that he had not been with us to share in the honours of the fight and defence.
Our loss had been serious; the poor fellow who had been the first wounded had died just before sunrise, and the surgeon of the brig pronounced the other cases to be somewhat bad. Porpoise’s was a flesh-wound—the advantage, as he observed, of being a fat man; but he forgot that if he had not been fat he might not have been wounded at all. Hearty, though he made light of his hurt, was very much injured; and the surgeon, with a somewhat significant look, advised him to get on shore as fast as he could, and to get carefully nursed for a time.
“You’ll have no great difficulty to get some one to nurse you,” he remarked.
I really believe that he did not think so badly of the case as he pretended. Be that as it may, we made the best of our way to Malta Harbour, where we all took up our abode on shore, while the cutter was undergoing some necessary repairs. The brig also requiring repairs, Rullock took lodgings, and in the most considerate way had Hearty conveyed to them, and invited his sister and niece to stay with him—a very indelicate proceeding, I dare say; but the jolly old sailor observed, “Who was so fit to look after a wounded man as the girl he was going to marry, and in whose defence he was wounded? A fig for all such rigmarole prudisms, say I.” As the parties concerned did not disagree with him, so the matter was arranged to the satisfaction of everybody.