"No," he whispered; "if it comes to the worst, and Jarette and his scoundrels are making for here, I shall put the muzzle of my gun to the touch-hole and fire it." "Won't it blow the priming away?" I said. "No; it will fire the piece instantly." "I hope he will not have to try," I thought to myself as I ran to Walters' cabin, and told him of the fight to come. "And I can't help," he moaned. "I wish I could." "What, to take the ship?" I said spitefully. "You know better than that," he said. I don't know how it was, but one minute I was saying that to him spitefully, the next I had hold of his hand and shook it. "I didn't mean it," I said quite hurriedly. "Good-bye, old chap; we're going to whop them after all." I ran out of the cabin with the thought in my mind that I might perhaps be killed. "And one ought to forgive everybody," I said to myself, just as Mr Brymer cried-- "Oh, here you are, Dale. Take this gun, and mind, you are the reserve. Be ready to go and help any one who is most pressed. There must be no nonsense now. Shoot down without mercy the first scoundrel who reaches the deck. If it is Jarette, aim at his head or breast; if it is one of the others, let him have it in the legs." He hurried to the side then, leaving me with a double-barrelled gun and a handful of cartridges, which, after seeing that the piece was loaded, I thrust into the breast-pocket of my jacket. "This is a rum way of forgiving one's enemies," I said to myself; "but I suppose I must." And then I began patrolling the deck as we waited on our defence, with the boats coming on and the insidious enemy within, for the fire was certainly making a little way in the hold. The boats were only a couple of hundred yards away now. I could see Jarette seated in the stem of one of them, as they came on abreast, making straight for the port-gangway abaft the main-mast; and my breath came thick and fast, for the fight was about to begin, and I felt that we could not expect much mercy at the hands of the leader of the men. CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN. "It's all over," I thought to myself; "they'll take the ship and send us adrift now;" but all the same I knew that the defence would be desperate as soon as Mr Brymer gave the word. I could see the faces of Jarette and his men now clearly enough in the one boat, while in the other I picked out five men, among whom was the cook, who would have been, I should have thought, the very last to join in so desperate a game, one which certainly meant penal servitude for all, and possibly a worse punishment for the leaders, as death might very probably ensue in the desperate attack upon the ship. But I had no more time for such thoughts. Jarette just then rose up in the stern of the boat he was in, and hailed us. "Ahoy, there! Open that gangway," he shouted, "and let down the roped steps." Mr Brymer stepped to the bulwarks just opposite the boat.