We strung our forces along the full length of the “Ly-ce-moon,” to prevent the pirates from getting behind us, and fought our way crosswise of the ship. One of the first things that caught my eye was the figure of a gigantic Chinaman in the afterpart of the vessel, who at first directed the fight and then took a large hand in it himself. It was, as I suspected at the time from the manner in which he had been described to me by Ah Fen, old Moy Sen himself, who had paid us the high honor of taking personal charge of the campaign against us. He was the biggest Chinaman I had ever seen and must have been a full-blooded Tartar. He was raw-boned and his face, of which I now and then caught a glimpse, was that of a fiend. He had tremendously long arms and every time he swung his sword he cleared a space. Lorensen and I, who were close together while Norton was farther forward, tried to fight our way to him, but we were held back by important business directly in front of us that demanded immediate attention. By the time we succeeded in working our way aft, the chief of all the pirates had disappeared. Made more desperate by the annihilation of their comrades on the junk and inspired by the presence of their great leader, and his commanding and defiant shouts, the Chinkies fought with a grim stubbornness which I had never before seen them display. They made no noise about it but kept chopping away, sometimes aimlessly, but always chopping. The scent of veritable rivers of blood would have sickened us, and our tired arms, like those of our enemies, would have settled into a methodical swing, had we not been spurred on by one victory and the prospect of a still greater one. My sword was broken off at the hilt in warding off a vicious blow, but before another one could be struck I seized a fortunately falling Chinkie and held him in front of me, while his blood gushed all over me, until I had secured his sword, which I used as effectively as my own. In trying to hamstring me a half-dead pirate gashed the calf of my leg to the bone, yet I scarcely noticed it. I felt something trickling down my face and knew a glancing blow had laid open my scalp, but there was no twinge of pain. It was the same with all of the others. No one thought of his wounds unless he was disabled, when, if he had strength enough, he dragged himself to the rear to be out of the way. Nothing was in our minds but to fight and win. Had there been twice as many of the pirates the result, in the end, would have been the same, for it was not in us to be defeated that night. Gradually, but slowly at first, we got the upper hand of them. When the inspiring voice of their chief was silenced they gave way more rapidly and our men chased them over the side and rushed into cabins, deckhouses, for’c’sle, engine room, and stokehole, hunting out those who had sought hiding places, and putting an end to the continued danger of pot shots.