ch sooner than I had expected
that it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that our people were
being steadily forced back in the direction of the camp; and this I
afterwards found to be correct; but the appearance of the skipper with
his reinforcements soon put another face upon the matter. It was
evident that the foe--consisting of some hundreds of negro savages had
been under the impression that they were fighting the entire strength of
the British, but when we came up they at once discovered their mistake,
which, with the knowledge that, for aught they could tell, there might
be further reinforcements waiting to take a hand in the game, somewhat
damped their courage. Not by any means at once, however; indeed it was
not for perhaps two or three minutes after our appearance upon the scene
that the first actual check upon their advance occurred. For they
appeared to number seven or eight to every one of us, and moreover they
were all picked warriors in the very prime of life, brave, fierce,
determined fellows, every one of them, and well armed with spear,
shield, war-club, and, in some cases, a most formidable kind of battle-
axe.

"Spread out right and left, and cut in wherever you can find room,"
ordered the skipper as we plunged, stumbling and gasping, into the midst
of the fray. And there was no difficulty in obeying this order; for,
narrow as the sand spit was, it was yet too wide for Mr Purchase and
the port watch to draw a close cordon across it; there were gaps of a
fathom or more in width between each of our men, and those gaps were
rapidly widening as some poor wretch went down, transfixed by a broad-
bladed spear, was clove to the shoulder by the terrific blow of an axe,
or had his brains dashed out by a war-club. But as our contingent
arrived each man chose an enemy--there was no difficulty in doing that--
and pulled trigger upon him, generally bringing him down, for we were
too close to miss; after which it became literally a hand-to-hand fight,
some using their discharged muskets as clubs while others flung them
away and trusted to their cutlasses, and one or two at least--for I saw
them close alongside me--depended entirely upon the weapons with which
nature had provided them, first dealing an enemy a knock-out blow with
the clenched fist and then dispatching him with one of his own weapons.
As for me, I still had the brace of pistols and the cutlass with which I
had provided myself when setting-o