y had all been sleeping on deck, and
had awakened at the gunner's call from aloft, and the glare of the
port-fire striking through their closed eyelids, and before the words
were well out of my lips they were standing to their guns and awaiting
my next order.

"Depress the muzzles of your guns as much as you can, and give the
treacherous rascals their contents as you bring them to bear," cried I.
"We shall only have time for one round, and if that does not stop them
we shall be obliged to fight them hand to hand!"

The whole of the schooner's guns were fired, one after the other, but
the port-fire unfortunately burnt out just about that time, so that we
were unable to ascertain what effect had been produced, and before
another could be found and lighted we heard and felt the light shocks of
collision as the canoes dashed alongside, and in a moment found
ourselves engaged in attempting to check the onset of a perfect _wall_
of savages that hemmed us in on every side, and surged, and struggled,
and writhed, and panted as they endeavoured to force a way through the
stubborn boarding nettings. It was just the tricing up of those
nettings that saved us; but for them the schooner's decks would have
been overrun, and we should have been massacred in a moment. As it was,
this unexpected obstacle, which of course none of them had observed in
the afternoon--the nettings not being then triced up--daunted them, for
they could neither displace it nor force a way through it, and while
they clung there, like a lot of bees, vainly striving to find or make a
passage through it, our men were blazing away with musket and pistol at
the black wall of writhing, yelling humanity, and bowling them over by
dozens at a time. When at length another port-fire was found and
lighted, it disclosed to us an appalling picture of dusky, panting
bodies, blazing eyeballs, waving skins and plumes, gleaming
spear-points, and upraised war-clubs hemming us in on both sides, from
stem to stern, every separate individual glaring at us with demoniac
hate and fury as he strove ineffectually to get at us.

The savages fell in scores at a time beneath our close and withering
fire, and at length, finding the netting impassable, and themselves
being shot down to no purpose, they suddenly abandoned the attack and
flung themselves back into their canoes, in which they made off with all
speed for the shore, subjected meanwhile to a galling fire of grape and
canist