We lit our battle lamps and hung them along under the rail so that they illuminated our deck, where we preferred to fight, because we knew every foot of it. We had about one hundred and twenty-five men on the “Leckwith,” Norton having taken the pick of the crews of the “Florence” and “Surprise,” while I was away, in order to be prepared for any contingency, and I had no fear that the pirates could come aboard fast enough to get away with us. The junk’s grappling iron held and as soon as she was clear of us we went ahead slowly. This drew the two ships together, which was what we wanted. As the junk swung around we let go our carronades, but we were at such close quarters that the slugs did not have time to scatter and simply ploughed small holes through the mass of men that swarmed her decks. We gave them a volley of rifle fire and met them with another as the ships came together. They rushed over the rail at us in a sulphur cloud. Then it was revolvers and cutlasses. The pirates resorted to their old trick of throwing themselves on the deck, as though killed or wounded, and trying to hamstring or disembowel us, but we were up to that game and were watching for it. We made sure that every Chinaman was dead when he struck the deck. Every blow was that of an executioner. In a few minutes, as it seemed then, though it may have been much longer, the decks were slippery with blood and I could actually hear it dripping through the scuppers into the quiet sea. It was such a fight as one gets into only in years, perhaps only once in a lifetime. The butchery was dreadful but the excitement of it set one’s blood ablaze. Our men became demons. As they shot and slashed they shouted and sang. A disarmed Chinkie seized me around the waist and dragged me in among his blood-stained fellows, but we were so closely wedged together that they could not chop at me without striking each other and they never thought of stabbing me. Norton and the mighty Lorensen, swinging an enormous Chinese sword which he had taken from one of his victims, came to my assistance and in a twinkling I was free, with dead and maimed pirates piled up around me in a circle. I could feel sword cuts now and then but they seemed like pin pricks. All of us were so covered with blood that there was no telling whether it came from our own wounds or those we had inflicted.