th a strong wind, the ship still clove the water; the boats
alternately falling behind, and pulling up, to discharge fresh volleys.

The fire was mostly directed towards the stern, since there, chiefly,
the negroes, at present, were clustering. But to kill or maim the
negroes was not the object. To take them, with the ship, was the object.
To do it, the ship must be boarded; which could not be done by boats
while she was sailing so fast.

A thought now struck the mate. Observing the Spanish boys still aloft,
high as they could get, he called to them to descend to the yards, and
cut adrift the sails. It was done. About this time, owing to causes
hereafter to be shown, two Spaniards, in the dress of sailors, and
conspicuously showing themselves, were killed; not by volleys, but by
deliberate marksman's shots; while, as it afterwards appeared, by one
of the general discharges, Atufal, the black, and the Spaniard at the
helm likewise were killed. What now, with the loss of the sails, and
loss of leaders, the ship became unmanageable to the negroes.

With creaking masts, she came heavily round to the wind; the prow slowly
swinging into view of the boats, its skeleton gleaming in the horizontal
moonlight, and casting a gigantic ribbed shadow upon the water. One
extended arm of the ghost seemed beckoning the whites to avenge it.

"Follow your leader!" cried the mate; and, one on each bow, the boats
boarded. Sealing-spears and cutlasses crossed hatchets and hand-spikes.
Huddled upon the long-boat amidships, the negresses raised a wailing
chant, whose chorus was the clash of the steel.

For a time, the attack wavered; the negroes wedging themselves to beat
it back; the half-repelled sailors, as yet unable to gain a footing,
fighting as troopers in the saddle, one leg sideways flung over the
bulwarks, and one without, plying their cutlasses like carters' whips.
But in vain. They were almost overborne, when, rallying themselves into
a squad as one man, with a huzza, they sprang inboard, where, entangled,
they involuntarily separated again. For a few breaths' space, there was
a vague, muffled, inner sound, as of submerged sword-fish rushing hither
and thither through shoals of black-fish. Soon, in a reunited band, and
joined by the Spanish seamen, the whites came to the surface,
irresistibly driving the negroes toward the stern. But a barricade of
casks and sacks, from side to side, had been thrown up by the main-mast.
Here the