ur
party, fore and aft, instantly following my example. For a few seconds
the savages who still stood on their feet--and how very few there seemed
to be of them!--appeared to be too completely dazed by what had happened
to take any steps to secure their safety; they even allowed themselves
to be shot and struck down without raising a hand to defend themselves!
Then, all in a moment, their senses seemed to return to them, and the
panic upon which I had reckoned took place; they glanced about them and
saw, that, whereas a minute before the deck upon which they stood had
been crowded with a surging throng of excited fellow savages all
striving to get within reach of those hated white men, it was now heaped
and cumbered with dead and dying, with only a stray uninjured man left
here and there; and incontinently, with shrill yells of terror, they
made for the bulwarks and tumbled over them, careless, apparently,
whether they dropped into a canoe or into the water, so long as they
could effect their escape from that awful shambles. Many of them, of
course, dropped into the canoes, and made good their escape; but the
splashing and commotion alongside, and the frequent shrieks of agony,
told only too plainly that many of them, in their haste, had missed the
canoes and fallen into the water, where the sharks were making short
work of them. As for us, as soon as the panic set in, and the retreat
was fairly under way, we held our hands, allowing the poor wretches to
get away without further molestation; and in two minutes from the moment
of that terrible discharge of the carronades not a native remained on
the deck of the _Indian Queen_ save those who were either dead, or too
severely injured to be able to escape.

CHAPTER TEN.

I REJOIN THE "SHARK."

As soon as all the savages who could leave the ship had gone, we roused
out as many lanterns as we could muster, lighted them, and hung them in
the fore and main rigging, or stood them here and there along the rail,
preparatory to going the rounds of the deck and beginning the gruesome
task of separating the dead from the wounded. And, while this was
doing, the general, who claimed to possess some knowledge of surgery,
retired to the main saloon, and having roused out Mrs Jenkins and her
daughter Patsy, and impressed them into his service as assistants,
proceeded to help Burgess to attend to the wounded of our own party, of
whom I was one, an arrow having transfixed me thro