bullets. The skipper, who was a pace ahead of me, stumbled,
staggered a pace or two, and fell headlong upon his face, where he lay
still, while his sword flew from his grasp with a ringing clatter. At
the same moment the two cutters dashed up alongside the wharf, and their
crews came swarming up out of them, to be met by another murderous
discharge from the enemy lurking in the bush.

I came to a halt beside the skipper, and looked round me. A couple of
yards away stood Cupid, who, it seemed, had just caught sight of the
captain as he fell, and had pulled himself up short.

"You, Cupid," I shouted, "come back here, sir, and lend me a hand to get
the captain back into the gig."

The fellow came, and stooping over the skipper's body raised it tenderly
in his arms.

"All right, Mistah Fortescue, sar," he said; "you no trouble. I take
dem captain back to de gig by myself, and find Mistah Hutchinson," (the
surgeon). "But it no good, sar; he gone dead. Look dere." And he
pointed to a ghastly great hole in the side of the skipper's head, just
above the left ear, where a piece of langrage of some description had
crashed its way through the poor fellow's skull into his brain. It was
a horrid sight, and it turned me quite sick for the moment, accustomed
though I was by this time to see men suffering from all sorts of
injuries.

"Very well," I said; "take it--the captain, I mean--back to the gig,
anyway, and do not leave him until you have turned him over to Mr
Hutchinson; who, by the way, is in the launch, which I see is just
coming alongside. I will find Mr Hutchinson and send him to you." And
away I hurried toward the spot where I saw the launch approaching, for
the double purpose of reporting to Mr Perry the news of the captain's
fall, and dispatching the surgeon to see if life still remained in the
body.

The first luff was terribly shocked at the news which I had to tell him;
from a distance he had seen the skipper fall, but had hoped that it was
a wound, at most. But this was not the moment for unavailing regrets;
the fall of the captain at once placed Perry in command and made him
responsible for the fate of the expedition. He therefore gave orders
for the guns which were mounted in the bows of the launch, pinnace, and
first and second cutters to be cast loose and landed, the men not
engaged in this work being placed under the command of the third
lieutenant, with instructions to load their muskets and