re and take charge of the Maxims. It's about time we let those
ginks know that we're awake, so I'll step down to the main-deck and see
about throwin' a shot over 'em."

We descended to the main-deck together, all hands being by that time on
deck and at stations; and while I went below to attend to the sending up
and distribution of the cutlasses and automatics, Kennedy planted
himself in rear of Number 2 gun of the port battery. A minute later the
deep, ringing report and jar of the discharge were heard and felt, but
with what effect I knew not, being on the deck beneath. A minute later
a second gun roared overhead, and while my ears were still ringing with
the report I heard the boom of a distant gun, and listened breathlessly
for the impact of the shot. I heard nothing, however, so concluded that
the missile had flown wide. By the time that our third gun spoke my
task below was completed; I therefore snatched at a cutlass, buckled the
belt round my waist, took a brace of automatic pistols from the man who
was loading them, thrust them into my belt, and rushed up on deck. I
encountered Kennedy near the foot of the poop ladder, reported to him
what I had done, and received from him the order to go up on the poop
and open fire with the Maxims forthwith.

"We've hit one of thim, and she seems to be sinkin'," he said; "but the
rest of the divvies are comin' for us like mad, wid their sweeps
churnin' up the wather like the paddles of one av your London tugs.
Shtop 'em from layin' us aboard, if ye can, bhoy. We want no
hand-to-hand fightin' wid thim, for they'll outnumber us ten to one, I
calculate." He added this last item in a confidential whisper.

I dashed up on the poop, and, to my great satisfaction, found both the
Maxims manned and well supplied with ammunition. But although it was
now easy enough to hear the grind and splash of the sweeps with which
the attackers were urging their craft through the water, ay, and even to
hear their shouts of encouragement to each other, the darkness and the
mist together still combined to render them too indistinctly visible to
permit of effective firing from our Maxims. I therefore shouted to
Kennedy a suggestion that he should order the man in the maintop to
light his portfires, so that we might have light to see what we were
about. And Kennedy was in the very act of giving the order when three
of the approaching craft fired upon us almost at the same instant; and a
_m