e a watchdog guarding the
smaller craft, while we attacked her in the bows.

The breeze was now dying away, the wind blowing off shore; and the
Somalis, seeing this, triced up their lateen sails, turning round like
rats driven up into a corner and facing us, at bay.

Captain Hankey, who had been pitching shot and shell into them from the
moment of our casting off from the _Mermaid_, some of the missiles
describing beautiful curves over our heads as we pulled in, now ceased
firing, for fear of hitting us as well as the foe; and so, the Arabs
were able to concentrate all their energies towards resisting us, the
batilla sending some round shot in our direction from an old brass
carronade she had mounted on her high forecastle, one of which, skipping
along the water as if it were playing ducks and drakes, shaved off three
of our oar-blades on the starboard side.

This did not stop us, though.

"Shift over, bow and the next man," shouted out Mr Dabchick. "Now, all
together, pull away, my lads, and let us go for them!"

The cheer that we gave on starting away from the _Mermaid_ was nothing
to what our chaps roared out now from their lusty throats; as, making
the water boil with the blades of our oars, we rowed hand over fist
right at the batilla's bows, the second cutter making for her stern
while the whaler, by Mr Dabchick's directions, pulled athwart the hawse
of a smaller dhow that had stayed her flight landwards and was coming
back, apparently, to the assistance of her big consort.

`Crash!' came the stem of our boat against the side of the batilla at
the same time that her old carronade, which had been loaded this time
with bullets and scrap iron like a shell, and having its muzzle
depressed, went off, right in our faces, with a `Bang!'

One of the fellows forward, the bowman on the port side of the cutter,
poor chap, tumbled backward overboard, uttering a wild shriek as he
fell; but otherwise the discharge did not do us much damage, and in
another second we seemed all scrambling up into the dhow and were at it
hammer and tongs.

It was my first fight and I can't forget it.

Every single incident that occurred stands out as clearly before me now
as if I were going over it all again!

We had, of course, all loaded up with ball-cartridge and fixed the
sword-bayonets to our rifles before we got up to the Arabs; and, by the
orders of our commander, we gave them a volley at close quarters as we
boarded.

But, a