CHAPTER XXII.

EIGHT AGAINST EIGHTY.

Noah had the first carronade on the right--that is, abreast of the mainmast. Stooping down, he trained it carefully, elevating and then slightly depressing the muzzle till he covered the object. He then smartly withdrew, lowered the match, and the recoil and report of the gun was followed by a yell from the Malays, whose rowers were seen tumbling from side to side, as if making summersets; for the shot, with its scattering accompaniment of broken bottles, made a complete lane from stem to stern, through the dingy occupants of the proa.

The echoes of the gun, with the cries of the Malays, rung with a thousand reverberations amid the rocks of the creek, startling clouds of wild birds from the mangroves and cane-brake beyond them.

"Fire number two--steady, Captain Phillips, please; here comes the next proa. Blaze away at the blasted warmint! Rake her fore and aft before she forges ahead!"

So shouted old Noah, while adroitly he assisted the recoil of his carronade, ran it back with the aid of Morley, and proceeded to reload and ram home. Captain Phillips, less used to this kind of work than he, levelled his carronade and fired; but he had not trained it properly, for, although the additional charge of broken bottles did some execution among the thick skulls of the Malays, the round shot whistled harmlessly over them all, and was seen ricochetting over the waves, till it made a white water-spout in the offing, far beyond the mouth of the creek.

Noah danced with disappointment and chagrin.

"Now, Mr. Morrison," he cried; "number three--level low--quick! here comes the next lot, a paddling like so many devils. Sweep the scum into eternity."

Morrison fired, and carried away the whole line of starboard paddles, and with them, perhaps, the rower's arms. Then, veering round, she thus fell foul of the first proa, just as the third came sweeping round, and headed towards the creek.

The scene was now terrible; there were some seventy or eighty Malays, many streaming with blood, all waving their paddles and weapons, and uttering such yells as one might imagine to rise from the infernal regions--yells inspired alike by the hope of plunder and of vengeance.

Then the contents of the third carronade, trained by Heriot and Foster, sped on the errand of death, right through them all, just as the leading proa got clear. Half its starboard side was torn away, and thus all its occupants were left to swim or flounder; the dead to sink and the wounded to drown, amid the slimy ooze of the creek.

While more than twenty were swimming, splashing, and scrambling ashore on each side, the paddlers in the other proas resumed their work, scooping the water astern with preternatural vigour, but to avoid a raking shot, presented more of their broadside to the ship, and hence retarded their own progress; so Noah fired his carronade right through one, just abaft the centre thwart, by this oblique shot killing or disabling three or four.

The yells were now appalling, the scene terrible, and yet withal most picturesque and striking.

The savage rabble in these proas were the woolly-headed Madecasses, who are partly of African descent; but all their leaders--and several appeared in each proa--were olive-skinned men, Hovahs, who are supposed to be of purer blood, and are viewed by the people of Madagascar somewhat as the Normans were by the Anglo-Saxons.

These men wore tunics of scarlet silk, like those of the Chinese, girt by sashes or belts; but their negro followers were naked, a few only having clothes about their middle, or wearing the ordinary garment of the Madecasses, which is made of bark, boiled and beaten, and shaped like a flour-sack, with a hole for the head, and four others for the legs and arms.

All wore chains, ear-rings, and bracelets of crystal cornelian, and even gold, and many were armed with assegais, headed like spears, with long, sharp, iron points; many had bucklers of hard wood, covered with hides. Some had ten or twelve javelins each; a few had clumsy old muskets, fortunately much addicted to hanging fire; and all had the native creese--a long, wavy, double-edged dagger. When we add to this equipment their black, ferocious faces, their shrill yells and diabolical activity, their white, glistening teeth, their glaring eyeballs, and whole _tout ensemble_, the reader may imagine the scene presented at this crisis in the mangrove creek.

The explosion of the first carronade had drawn a simultaneous shriek and shudder from the two girls, and their old nurse, in the cabin, and a cheer from their eight devoted friends on deck, while with it, and with every future discharge, the pintados, the black paroquets, the spoonbills, and the turtle-doves flew in screaming coveys out of the jungle.

"Depress your muzzles!" cried Noah, who had, by tacit consent apparently, constituted himself master-gunner; "they're nearing us, mates."

"Another dose of broken bottles; they make first-rate grape and canister," added Morrison.

"Crouch down--crouch down--here's a volley of something coming!" shouted Captain Phillips, from his gun, as four or five musket-bullets crashed through the bulwarks, and a number of arrows or javelins and assegais, whistled harmlessly over their heads, and fell pattering on the starboard side of the deck, as fast as the survivors of the shattered proas scrambled ashore, and began to use their weapons.

"The warp--the starn warp!" shouted Noah, as with muzzle depressed, he fired his carronade again; "pick off some o' those d----d heathen niggers afore they cuts it, some one."

Two savages had already reached the warp, which was carried through the taffrail to the kedge, and were proceeding to slash through the strands of the strong Manilla, hewing with their creeses, and, had they done so, the ship must have swerved round, and gone ashore, broadside on.

Morley snatched up the double-barrelled gun which Mr. Basset had just reloaded. Kneeling down, he levelled it steadily through the taffrail, and shot both down in quick succession--a strange and wild emotion coming over him as he saw them fall, and beat the earth with their hands and feet. This cooled the ardour of five or six others, who followed, for he saw them plunge down among the mangroves, where they lay flat in concealment.

At that moment, a Hovah, in a crimson shirt, who had clambered, all wet and dripping, up the mizzen chains, launched an assegai at Morley, which skinned his right ear, and stuck quivering in the deck, near the coaming of the main-hatch. He then proceeded to scramble on board, with his sharp creese in his teeth, and a savage glitter in his eye, when Morley clubbed the double-barrelled gun. and swinging it aloft at the full stretch of his arms, dealt the Hovah a blow on his hard caput, which tumbled him prone into the water; but the gun was destroyed, as it snapped in two at the small part of the butt.

Morley rushed back to rejoin his friends at the carronades; but found poor Noah grappling with a gigantic Malay, who had dropped over the bulwark near the starboard quarter, where they were rolling over each other, Noah swearing, and the Malay biting and howling, till the former, grasping the long, tawny ears of the latter, rings and all, dashed his head thrice on the deck, when he stunned, and then flung him overboard.

At that moment an arrow, which all feared might be poisoned--whistled through Noah's cheeks, knocking out a couple of his few remaining teeth; but with a pistol he shot dead the archer, who was nestling among the mangroves.

So far as the eight unfortunates on the deck of the _Hermione_ could judge, they had been attacked by not less than eighty men!

Now the two proas were close alongside; another moment would have seen the savage Malays swarming in scores up the bulwarks and over the decks; but just as a groan of dismay simultaneously burst from the few devoted defenders of the _Hermione_, her head warp was slashed through by creeses, and she suddenly fell away round before the south-west breeze, with her bow towards the sea, thus increasing the distance between her assailants and herself by the whole length of her stern warp, at a moment when, all the Malays were in the act of standing up to leap on board, and as she so swerved away, she went right ashore, broadside on, amongst the mangroves, with all her four carronades pointed to the land, leaving her starboard side unprotected against the yelling occupants of the two remaining proas.

"God help us!" cried poor Captain Phillips, in despair; "all is over now!"