d to have failed to comprehend its
full significance, and, therefore, to have been unable to make up their
minds to slue the gun round and point it in the opposite direction.
This state of indecision on their part not only enabled us to approach
them with impunity but also to take them in flank; and a couple of
rounds of grape from the felucca so astonished and demoralised them that
those who were not killed or disabled by our fire incontinently
abandoned the battery and sought safety in flight to the deepest
recesses of the bush which lined the shore.

Fidd, with a dozen hands, then jumped into the schooner's gig, which had
been towing astern of the felucca, and shoved off with the object of
destroying the battery; and we now had another specimen of the ability
with which the defences of the lagoon had been planned; for, on
approaching the battery, it was found to be bordered on three sides by a
bank of ooze, some ten fathoms broad, which ooze proved to be of such a
consistency that, whilst it was much too liquid and too deep to permit
of a man wading through it, it was at the same time so thick as to
render the passage of a boat through it almost impossible. It took the
crew of the gig more than twenty minutes to force the boat through this
semi-liquid mass, they exerting themselves to their utmost, meanwhile;
so that, had the schooner, in passing up the lagoon, managed to survive
the fire of the gun, any attempt to storm the battery with the aid of
boats must have resulted in irretrievable disaster. However, Fidd and
his blue-jackets managed to reach _terra firma_ eventually; and it was
then the work of only a few minutes to capsize the gun and all its
appurtenances over the edge of the bank into the ooze, where the whole
was instantly swallowed up.

Meanwhile, the felucca, slowly drifting down the lagoon, encountered--at
a distance of some fifty fathoms below the battery--another obstacle, in
the shape of a second chain, similar to the former, stretched across the
channel, which rendered our further progress impossible until the
barrier had been removed. This--there being nobody to interfere with
our actions--was soon done; and we then passed on, meeting with no
further obstruction until we came to the first chain. This, like the
one previously passed, was removed by casting off both ends and allowing
the whole affair to sink to the bottom of the lagoon--where it was
doubtless instantly swallowed up by the mud-