_Crack_! One of the pirates, crouching behind another, had coolly levelled his musket and taken a pot shot at me, the bullet passing through my hat and searing my skull like a white-hot wire, so that I toppled over with the shock and fell back into the arms of one of my men. The yell of savage joy raised by the pirates at the sight of my fall was echoed by my own men as they sprang to their feet, intending to leap over the low parapet and charge down upon the advancing foe to avenge me. But I was not really hurt, and, shaking off the grip of the man who held me, I cried out in time to stay them, adjuring them, by all that they held dear, to stand fast where they were, and finish the fight in the battery itself. And splendidly they obeyed me, although they might well have been excused had they ignored my command; for the firing of that musket-shot served as the signal for a general fusillade on both sides, in the course of which four of our men fell. But ours was the commanding position, and by the time that the pirates had emptied their muskets and pistols at us we had brought them to a standstill, with more than half their number down. After that there was no possibility of further restraining our lads, nor, indeed, was there any need. We, therefore, poured out over the low earthwork and down the few yards of slope that still intervened between us and the enemy, and the next moment were engaged in a hand-to-hand, life-and-death conflict, neither side expecting or giving quarter. For the few seconds that it lasted it was warm work, the pirates fighting desperately--since they knew that, if taken alive, the halter awaited them--and then, in the space of a minute it was all over. The last of our foes was down--as well as a few more men on our own side--and we who remained unhurt stood gasping for breath, and mopping our perspiring brows as we glared hungrily about us for more foes to conquer. But there were none; and presently pulling ourselves together, we gathered up our own wounded and carried them to such shade as could be found, where the surgeon's mate, who formed one of our company, at once got to work upon them, attending to their hurts. Meanwhile the ensign was hoisted as a signal to the felucca to return to the harbour; and then such of us as could be spared went out to disarm the wounded pirates and afterwards afford them such relief as lay in our power, while others again gleaned the weapons and ammunition of the fallen, recognising that they might possibly be useful in our fight with the crew of the _Tiburon_ later on.