The cheer that we gave on starting away from the _Mermaid_ was nothing to what our chaps roared out now from their lusty throats; as, making the water boil with the blades of our oars, we rowed hand over fist right at the batilla's bows, the second cutter making for her stern while the whaler, by Mr Dabchick's directions, pulled athwart the hawse of a smaller dhow that had stayed her flight landwards and was coming back, apparently, to the assistance of her big consort. `Crash!' came the stem of our boat against the side of the batilla at the same time that her old carronade, which had been loaded this time with bullets and scrap iron like a shell, and having its muzzle depressed, went off, right in our faces, with a `Bang!' One of the fellows forward, the bowman on the port side of the cutter, poor chap, tumbled backward overboard, uttering a wild shriek as he fell; but otherwise the discharge did not do us much damage, and in another second we seemed all scrambling up into the dhow and were at it hammer and tongs. It was my first fight and I can't forget it. Every single incident that occurred stands out as clearly before me now as if I were going over it all again! We had, of course, all loaded up with ball-cartridge and fixed the sword-bayonets to our rifles before we got up to the Arabs; and, by the orders of our commander, we gave them a volley at close quarters as we boarded. But, after this, I don't think any one thought of loading or firing again, save one or two of the fellows astern and the coxswain of the boat, being too busy guarding the slashes the Somalis made at us with their long scimitar-like swords that were curved like reaping-hooks, and the blows they dealt us with their unwieldy matchlocks, which they used in club fashion. It was a terrible struggle trying to climb the high overhanging sides of the batilla in the face of such tooth and nail opposition, the beggars fighting, as Mr Gresham had said, like veritable wild cats! We were beaten back into the cutter twice, after some half a dozen of us had been wounded, some desperately; and then the second cutter, which could not manage to board her astern, coming up to our help and sheering in alongside us, our gallant leader Mr Dabchick determined on one grand final rush. CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR. WE NEARLY LOSE THE CUTTER! "Larrikins," said I, whispering in his ear, as we stood up together just in the rear of Mr Dabchick, balancing myself on one of the thwarts forward, being about to make another spring for the side of the big dhow, while Larry shoved a cartridge hastily into the breech of his rifle, and was in the act of taking a pot shot at a chap who seemed to be the skipper of the batilla and had a nose on him like the beak of a Brazilian parrot, "little Dabby means business!" He did.