l, and held there firmly. He leapt down upon
them, his companions following him, and using them as a gangway, reached
the bulwarks. He threw a leg over the side, and alighted on a decked
space between two oars and the two rows of six slaves that were manning
each of them.

Biskaine followed him and the negroes came last. They were still astride
of the bulwarks when Sakr-el-Bahr gave the word. Up the middle
gangway ran a bo'sun and two of his mates cracking their long whips of
bullock-hide. Down went the oars, there was a heave, and they shot out
in the wake of the other two to join the fight.

Sakr-el-Bahr, scimitar in hand, stood on the prow, a little in advance
of the mob of eager babbling corsairs who surrounded him, quivering in
their impatience to be let loose upon the Christian foe. Above, along
the yardarm and up the ratlines swarmed his bowmen. From the mast-head
floated out his standard, of crimson charged with a green crescent.

The naked Christian slaves groaned, strained and sweated under the
Moslem lash that drove them to the destruction of their Christian
brethren.

Ahead the battle was already joined. The Spaniard had fired one
single hasty shot which had gone wide, and now one of the corsair's
grappling-irons had seized her on the larboard quarter, a withering hail
of arrows was pouring down upon her decks from the Muslim crosstrees;
up her sides crowded the eager Moors, ever most eager when it was a
question of tackling the Spanish dogs who had driven them from their
Andalusian Caliphate. Under her quarter sped the other galley to take
her on the starboard side, and even as she went her archers and stingers
hurled death aboard the galleon.

It was a short, sharp fight. The Spaniards in confusion from the
beginning, having been taken utterly by surprise, had never been able
to order themselves in a proper manner to receive the onslaught. Still,
what could be done they did. They made a gallant stand against this
pitiless assailant. But the corsairs charged home as gallantly, utterly
reckless of life, eager to slay in the name of Allah and His Prophet
and scarcely less eager to die if it should please the All-pitiful that
their destinies should be here fulfilled. Up they went, and back fell
the Castilians, outnumbered by at least ten to one.

When Sakr-el-Bahr's galliot came alongside, that brief encounter was at
an end, and one of his corsairs was aloft, hacking from the mainmast the
standard of Sp