to his
men to redouble their efforts, and to those on the gunboat to go back
and try again.

But there was worse to come. The Englishman was at the head of his men,
plying his cutlass with terrible effect, when he felt a slight jar, and
looked round just in time to see a man on board the _Su-chen_ throw off
the last grapnel, and the gunboat begin to gather sternway down the
stream. He uttered a shout of rage, and strove to hew his way to the
side of the junk; but even as he did so, he realised that he was too
late. There were already fathoms of water between junk and steamer, and
the bitter conclusion was forced home upon him that he had been deserted
by his crew, and left alone with a mere handful of men in the midst of a
crowd of howling, murderous pirates. The end of all things for him
seemed very close at that moment.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

THE PATHWAY OF GLASS.

Desperate as the situation undoubtedly was, Captain Frobisher was not
the man to yield without a struggle. He was cornered, and he knew it.
Nothing short of a miracle could extricate him from the position in
which the momentary panic of the other boarding party had placed him by
the withdrawal of the _Su-chen_; but he determined that, if he was to
die, he would not die alone.

With this resolution, he renewed the fight with even greater desperation
than before, if that were possible; and so formidable a foe did he
become that, for a few seconds, the pirates in front of him wavered and
all but broke. His tall, strong figure, as he advanced bareheaded, with
set teeth and gleaming eyes, and that long ruddily-gleaming strip of
steel which played here, there, and everywhere with the swiftness of
light, made up a spectacle sufficiently awe-inspiring to terrify any
man, one would have thought; but many of the pirates were themselves
almost as big and strong as Frobisher, and were thoroughly accustomed to
desperate, hand-to-hand fighting. Their hesitation was therefore but
momentary, and the next instant they had closed round him like a pack of
hungry wolves, snarling and spitting curses at him, and even striving to
pull him down with their hands.

Gaining the opportunity of an instant's breathing space, Frobisher
glanced quickly behind him to discover how many of his men were left to
him, and was horrified to find that, out of the forty men who had
followed him on to the deck of the junk, but ten remained on their feet,
while of those ten, fully half