we could only
guess. It may have been, as is probable, that he was at the end of the
small supply of bombs left from the raid he was doubtless returning
from.

"Again, however, it is just possible that the fact that the fire was
being got under control on the poop impelled him to adopt an attack
calculated to drive the plucky chaps who were fighting it to cover.

"Anyhow, flying just high enough to clear the tops of the masts, he came
swooping back, and it was upon the men trying to put out the fire--now
confined to the wreckage--of the deckhouse--that he seemed to
concentrate his attack. Two or three of these I saw fall under the rain
of bullets, and among them was our freight clerk, who had also been
knocked down by the explosion of the first bomb, but who, being hardly
stunned by the shock, was soon on his feet again and leading the
fire-fighters.

"He was a good deal of a character, this freight clerk. Although well
educated, he had led a free and easy existence in various parts of the
world. For a year previous to the war he had been a cowboy, and some
queer trait in his character made him still cling to the _poncho_, or
shoulder blanket, and baggy trousers, which are the main features of the
Argentine cow-puncher's rigout. It was the Wild West rig that made me
notice him when he was knocked down by the bomb and later by the
machine-gun fire.

"He was scarcely more hurt the second time than the first, but the
bullet which had grooved the outer covering of his brain-box seemed also
to have put a new idea inside it. I saw him pull himself together in a
dazed sort of way after the seaplane had passed, and then shake off the
hand of a man who tried to help him, and dash off down the ladder,
tumbling to cover, I thought.

"It must have been a minute or two later that I saw him, legs wide apart
to keep his balance, pumping back at the Hun (who had swung close again
in the interim) with a rifle--a weapon which I later learned was an old
Winchester, which had been rusting on the wall of the freight clerk's
cabin. He appeared to have had the worst of the exchange, for when I
looked again he was sitting, with one leg crumpled crookedly under him,
propped up against a bitt.

"He looked still full of fight, though, and seemed to be replenishing
the magazine of the rifle from his bandoliers.

"The skipper sent me below to stir things up a bit in the engine-room at
this juncture, and I did not see my cowboy friend until