Thus time went on, when one night I was awoke by hearing a fearful uproar, rapid reports of firearms, shouts and shrieks of men fighting desperately. Presently flames burst forth from different parts of the village. They were approaching the house where I was. The one next to it was on fire. My kind protectress did not forget me. At first, not knowing what to do, she had remained watching the progress of events, hoping probably that the enemy would be driven back. When, however, the fire surrounded her house, she saw that it was time to fly. Seizing me in her arms she was about to do so, when the crackling and hissing flames burst forth around us. At that moment a man leaped up the steps. Though so long a time had passed since we had parted, I at once recognised my friend Jack. Snatching me from the woman's arms, he sprang down to the ground, telling her to follow him. Bullets were whizzing through the air in all directions. He made his way as fast as his legs could carry him out of the range of fire, and then directed his course towards the river, where he sat down on the ground beneath some bushes, and I believe I fell asleep. It was just daylight when I awoke, and Jack creeping with me down to the water's edge, we saw several boats full of men. Jack shouted to them, and one of them put in and took us on board. They were, he afterwards told me, the boats of two Dutch men-of-war, which had been sent up the river to destroy the nest of pirates. This they had done effectually, and were now on their way back to their ships. Jack was the only one of the shipwrecked crew who had escaped; what had become of the others he could not tell, but concluded that they had been murdered. It was a long time, however, before I could speak to him or understand what he said, for I had been so long without hearing a word of English that I had almost forgotten it, while he knew but very little of the native language in which I had in the meantime learned to express my wants. We were kindly received on board one of the Dutch frigates. Jack tried to tell the captain the little he knew about me, but as the Dutchman spoke no English, and Jack was ignorant of Dutch, he did not, I suspect, give him a very lucid account. Jack having been but a short time at the port from which we sailed, as he had joined the ship from a vessel which had arrived only the day before, had entirely forgotten its name, and being no navigator he had not the slightest notion from what direction we had come. He was not much happier in recollecting the name of the vessel, except that there were two of them both ending, as he said, in "jee."