were bleeding from more or less severe
wounds which would quickly put them _hors de combat_. There was
therefore not the smallest possibility of cutting a way through the
dense throng that surrounded them and leaping over the side into the
water, as he had at first thought of doing; and there seemed nothing to
be done but to sell his life and the lives of his followers as dearly as
possible--for he was quite resolved to die rather than fall alive into
the hands of the pirates, having already heard something of the tender
mercies of the Chinese to their prisoners.

Unhappily for Frobisher, however, he was unable to control circumstance,
and, not having eyes in the back of his head, he was unaware of what was
happening behind him. He did not know that a few seconds later his
followers were all cut down and slain, and that he remained fighting
alone, without a single protector at his back, and with his enemies
swarming all round him. Neither did he observe the chief, whom he had
been trying to reach unsuccessfully ever since the beginning of the
fight, made a brief signal to his men not to strike.

Consequently he was not a little astonished when he suddenly felt
himself seized round the neck and body by half a dozen pairs of arms,
which pinioned his own and left him helpless. In an instant his cutlass
was wrenched from his grasp and he was hurled to the deck, where more
men immediately flung themselves upon him, holding him firmly down, so
that he found it utterly impossible to move a limb.

Thereafter the business of binding him was comparatively easy, and he
presently found himself swathed from head to foot in coils of rope,
until he resembled a mummy rather than a living man.

His captors then rolled him contemptuously out of the way against the
shot-riddled bulwarks, and proceeded to take account of their
casualties. Where Frobisher had made his final stand the dead lay
thickest, and he noticed with grim satisfaction that there were very few
wounded men to be seen. His men and he had fought well, and he had
nothing with which to reproach himself. The pirate chief scowled
heavily as he scanned the result of the fight; but although he had
unquestionably paid dearly in men for his victory, he had no compunction
in ordering the more severely wounded to be hove over the side.
Probably there were no facilities for doctoring them, and the chief
perhaps thought they might as well die now as later on, and so save hi