When he threw his grappling irons we made them fast and, before he had time to think, or to see all that had happened, we were scrambling over his high sides, each man armed with a revolver in one hand and a cutlass in the other. The Chinaman, even when he is a pirate, has no rapid resourcefulness. When you “switch the cut” on him, or do anything in a different way from that in which he expects you to do it, he has to stop and figure it out and fix himself all over again. Moy Sen’s crew were prepared to board us, and when we made the offensive our defensive, and carried the fight to them with an altogether unexpected rush, they were so taken by surprise that they offered little real resistance to our invasion. But by the time we were all on board they had regained their senses and the fight that followed was even more savage than the one before it. There were no lights, except those under the “Leckwith’s” rail, which did us little good, and the pirates fired at us from hiding places about their well-known decks, which we could not make out until our eyes had become accustomed to the darkness. Our men shot and, when their revolvers were empty, slashed at every noise. In order that we might not attack each other we kept up a contemptuous chant of curses on the Chinese, counting time to it with our cutlasses. The result was a repetition of what had occurred with the crew of the junk, but it required much longer to accomplish it. The junk had carried more men than the steamer, for it was planned that those on the junk were to do the brunt of the fighting and get us going before the others came at us from behind; but the first battle was fought on a well-lighted deck with every foot of which we were familiar, while the second struggle took place on a strange ship and in semi-darkness, which was lightened only by the lamps on our own ship below us and a few stars above, for the sky was overcast with clouds.