Hardly had I said this to my chum, making him miss his aim, I am sorry to say, at the Arab beggar, who made a cut at me the next minute and would have sliced off my starboard fin if I had not drawn back rather hurriedly, ere our lieutenant sprang on to the back of Jones, the other bowman, and then jumped right clean amongst the mass of Arabs in the bows of the dhow. "Come on, my lads!" he cried, in the middle of his jump; "follow me!" This was enough for us. Without an instant's reflection I imitated Dabby, using Jones's back as a scaling-ladder, as did half a dozen other fellows; until the poor beggar was pretty nearly trodden flat into the bottom of the boat. `Whiz!' went the matchlock balls of the Arabs past our ears; `whir-r-ir' sliced away their scimitars right and left in the air, with the regularity of so many flails at work on a barn-floor; but we did not mind them a bit, for the `phit--phit--phit!' of the bullets from our Martini rifles pattered amongst the bronze-coloured rascals like hail, deadening the whiz of their longer-barrelled weapons, while ever and anon the Maxim of the second cutter grunted out a fusillade of grape, making a noise like that of an old man with a bad cough on a winter's night going up to bed in the cold. "Ship my rowlocks!" as father would have said had he been there, but the Maxim made some of those blessed Arabs cough, I can tell you; ay, and put a goodish few to bed too! "Lor'," cried Larrikins, who was fighting like a bulldog by my side, "I never did see, blame me Tom, sich a bloomin' scrimmage in me life as this yere!" It was all that, it being a case of give and take all round, for the Somalis made a rare stand. They went their best for Dabby, seeing that he was our leader; but the plucky little chap, with his sword in one hand and a revolver in the other, stood amongst them as brave as you please, cutting at this one, peppering at that, and guarding in some miraculous way a hundred blows aimed at him from every side. Don't think, though, that we left our officer to battle against the Arabs single-handed. Not we. I do not say it in any boasting sense, will you please recollect, for I am sure that no one who knows me would accuse me of being a braggart; but, as I am telling of events that really happened, I must speak the truth, and so to do this I am obliged to say that I was one of the first to spring to Mr Dabchick's side after he boarded the dhow, Larrikins coming next with a mad leap that nearly scrunched my toes off, and then the coxswain of the cutter and the rest of the chaps. Striking out with our cutlasses, we soon cleared a circle round the lieutenant; and then, forming up like a breastwork in front of him, we rushed at the remaining Somalis in the bows, hurling over into the sea, with the impetus of our charge, those whom we did not cut down outright, or settle with a thrust from our straight-edged blades.