From forward came the cautious voices of the watch. The light revealed the masts and rigging of the ship for forty or fifty feet from the deck, but beyond the cross-jack yard all was hazy, and the cabin seemed in the odd shadows twice its real size. I wondered if Falk were asleep, too, or if we should come on him sitting up in the cabin, busy with his books and charts. I wondered who was in the galley, where I saw a light; who was standing watch; who was asleep below. Still we moved noiselessly on under the stern of the ship, until I almost could have put my hands on the carved letters, "Island Princess." Besides things on deck, the light also revealed our own attacking party. The man in front of me had laid his paddle in the bottom of the canoe and held a spear across his knees. In the boat on our right were five natives armed with spears and krises; in the one on our left, four. Beyond the craft nearest to us I could see others less distinctly--silent shadows on the water, each with her head toward our prey, like a school of giant fish. In the lee of the ship, the pinnace floated at the end of its painter. Still the watch forward talked on in low, monotonous voices; still Kipping leaned on the rail, his head bent, his arms folded, to all appearances fast asleep. I had now forgotten my fears. I was keenly impatient for the word to attack. A shrill wailing cry suddenly burst on the night air. The man in front of me, holding his spear above his head with one hand, made a prodigious leap from the boat, caught the planking with his fingers, got toe-hold on a stern-port, and went up over the rail like a wild beast. With knives between their teeth, men from the proas on my right and left boarded the ship by the chains, by the rail, by the bulwark. I saw Kipping leap suddenly forward and whirl about like a weasel in his tracks. His yell for all hands sounded high above the clamor of the boarders. Then some one jabbed the butt of a spear into my back and, realizing that mine was not to be a spectator's part in that weird battle, I scrambled up the stern as best I could. The watch on deck, I instantly saw, had backed against the forecastle where the watch below was joining it. Captain Falk and some one else, of whose identity I could not be sure, rushed armed from the cabin. Then a missile crashed through the lantern, and in the darkness I heard sea-boots banging on the deck as those aft raced forward to join the crew.