of armed blacks. When I raised my head, I saw
the chief, Captain Jack, we called him, with a broad ax in his hand, and
the next minute he had chopped the overseer's head clean off; in two
minutes all my mates were on the ground. Three or four came running up
to us; one threw a spear at me, which I half parried with a pannikin I
was using to wet the grindstone, but it fixed deep in my hip, and part
of it I believe is there still. Charley Anvils had an ax in his hand,
and cut down the first two fellows that came up to him, but he was
floored in a minute with twenty wounds. They were so eager to kill me,
that one of them, luckily, or I should not have been alive now, cut the
spear in my hip short off. Another, a young lad I had sharpened a
tomahawk for a few days before, chopped me across the head; you can see
the white hair. Down I fell, and nothing could have saved us, but the
other savages had got the tarpaulin off, and were screaming with
delight, plundering the drays, which called my enemies off. Just then,
Dick came in sight. He saw what was the matter; but although there were
more than a hundred black devils, all armed, painted, bloody, and
yelling, he never stopped or hesitated, but rode slap through the camp,
fired bang among them, killing two, and knocking out the brains of
another. As he passed by a top rail, where an ax was sticking, he caught
it up. The men in the camp were dead enough; the chief warriors had made
the rush there, and every one was pierced with several spears, or cut
down from close behind by axes in the hands of the chiefs. We, being
further off, had been attacked by the boys only. Dick turned toward us,
and shouted my name, I could not answer, but I managed to sit up an
instant; he turned toward me, leaned down, caught me by the jacket, and
dragged me on before him like a log. Just then Charley, who had crept
under the grindstone, cried, 'Oh, Dick, don't leave me!' As he said
that, a lot of them came running down, for they had seen enough to know
that, unless they killed us all, their job would not be half done. As
Dick turned to face them, they gave way, and flung spears, but they
could not hurt him: they managed to get between us and poor Charley.
Dick rode back a circuit, and dropped me among some bushes on a hill,
where I could see all. Four times he charged through and through a whole
mob, with an ax in one hand, and his short musket in the other. He cut
them down right and left, as if he