We looked upon our work and pronounced it good, but before we had time to congratulate ourselves or count noses to ascertain the extent to which we had suffered, we discovered a big steamer almost on top of us. It was the “Ly-ce-moon,” the flagship of Moy Sen’s fleet, and, though we did not know it, the old pirate chief himself was in command of her. We barely had time to refill our revolvers and get back onto the “Leckwith,” when she banged into us and made fast with her grapplers. She was nearly twice the size of the “Leckwith” and her rail was three or four feet above ours. We did not know how many men she carried nor did any of us care, for we were mad with monotonous murder; the bestial blood lust that comes from a glut of human butchery was over all of us. We were both exhilarated and enraged; stimulated by the quick work we had made of the junk, and furious at the revelation of the cunning trap that had been set for us. The junk was the bait. It was expected that we would attack and board her; that our boarding force would be overwhelmed by the hundreds of devils who were crammed into her hold, and while this fight was on the “Ly-ce-moon” was to come up on the other side and finish us off. It was shrewdly planned and if we had not been on our guard and suspicious of everything, we would have fallen into the trap, and delayed matters so long that when it came we would have had a fight on our hands which it would have been hard to win. As I reasoned it out, when we ranged alongside of the junk to size her up more closely, as soon as she came up with us, her commander, naturally thinking we were preparing to attack him, decided that the cunning thing for him to do was to throw his horde aboard of us instead of waiting for us to board him. He supposed we carried only our ordinary crew, as all of our extra men were out of sight, and figured that it would be an easy game for him, in which he stood to win a lot of glory with no chance of losing; for even if we should develop unexpected strength, the steamer would come up in time to make our defeat certain. Nothing but this turn of affairs, which was not according to the programme, and the fury with which our augmented crew went at the Chinkies, made it possible for us to render the junk entirely harmless before Moy Sen arrived.