Dwight and Nicky watched the lakatoi bowling down toward them. The natives on her were brandishing their bows and spears and did not seem in the least friendly. Their own crew now lined the rails of the proa, armed with a motley collection of Singapore muskets, old repeating rifles of the Spencer vintage, and bows and arrows. They yelled defiance at the approaching catamaran and were evidently eager for a fight. She came steadily on, while everyone crouched behind the gunwales, peering at her. At about fifty yards a cloud of arrows sailed from her and came swishing and singing aboard, striking the deck house and sticking in the soft planks. Dwight picked up one of them, while the thunder of black-powder guns roared out from their own ship. The arrow was of cane, without nock or feathers, a yard long, and had a point of ebony notched with barbs for a foot back. “Outanatas!” he exclaimed. “They mean business. Give it to ’em, Nick!” They fired their pistols, hoping to add to the number who had already dropped struggling on the fighting platform. Sadok’s long sumpitan stuck out over the gunwale, and at every cough from its muzzle a yelling, arrow-shooting native would grow livid and fall helplessly among his comrades. Her deck was a shambles, but there were plenty of them left and she came steadily on. A crash shivered the proa from stem to stern as the lakatoi’s high prows rode up over their gunwale, and twenty blacks leaped aboard, stabbing with their spears over shields that were hideous with the carved scrolls of diabolical faces on them. Parangs flashed out among the crew and a fierce hand-to-hand struggle on deck ensued. The crew charged at the invaders, led by Sadok, whose whirling parang-ihlang swung around his head in red flashes that cleft to the bone where they struck. The boys held off, firing deliberately where a particularly fierce native seemed to be carrying all before him. On and on came the boarders in a living black stream, while the air sang with arrows from those still on the lakatoi. They were outnumbered, three to one. Slowly the crew gave back in the furious mêlée, the struggling mass of brown and black men stabbing and cutting in a writhing heap in the waist. Behind them two tall natives fought toward the masts, armed with blazing torches to set the sail afire. With a fierce burst of pistol shots the boys picked them off. Then the brown flash of the curator’s long frame leaped out of the deck house. An arrow pierced his helmet as his arm swept over his head in the cricketer’s swing. A brown object like a baseball shot over to the lakatoi, followed by another and another as the arm went on swinging with incredible swiftness.