lets slit my sleeve, and the next one pierced my helmet.

"Put one into Schillingschen, Fred!" I shouted, but Fred did not
answer. He kept up a very steady succession of shots that were doing
no good at all that I could see.

Another German bullet found its mark below deck in the thigh of the
Goanese. He might have known enough to lie quiet, having some alleged
white blood in him, but instead he, too, came struggling to the
after-deck, bellowing like a mad-man. Coutlass knocked him back below
with a blow on the chin, and he there and then threw the whole crowd
into a panic by screaming and kicking. They all began to try to swarm
together through the narrow opening, and those in the rear tore at the
reed deck.

Into that pandemonium went Coutlass, armed with nothing but Hellenic
fury, thoughtful of nothing but his lady-love--surely reckless of his
own skin. He beat, kicked, bit, scragged, banged their foolish heads
together, cursed, spat, gouged, and strangled as surely no catamount
ever did. Brown leaped in to lend a hand, and into the midst of that
inferno three more bullets penetrated, each wounding a man. Lady
Waldon, mad with some idiotic strategy of her own sudden devising,
seized the tiller and tried to wrench it from my hand. The Syrian
Rebecca, imagining new treachery and fearful for her Greek lover, tried
to prevent her with teeth and nails. The Germans raised a war-whoop of
wild enjoyment. And just at the height of all that, Fred's
three-and-twentieth shot went home.

There was a loud report, followed by instant nothing except stampede on
the part of the Germans to get out of reach of something. Then the
something grew denser; invisible hot vapor became a pall of steam that
bid the launch from view, three more shots from Fred's rifle finding
the proper mark by sheer accident, for there was another explosion;
the cloud increased and the launch stopped dead.

"That gray sheet of metal wasn't her boiler at all!" Fred shouted back
to me. "The first shot pierced the boiler when I found out where to
aim! I think three of them are scalded badly--hope so!--high pressure
steam--superheated--did you see? Now leave 'em to find their own way
home!"

"See if you can't get Schillingschen!" said I.

But Schillingschen was invisible in the white cloud, and Fred refused
to waste one of the half-dozen cartridges remaining. The light wind
that bore us away from the launch also spread the screen of steam
b