were upon us.

The head of Job Anderson, the boatswain, appeared at the middle
loophole.

"At 'em, all hands--all hands!" he roared, in a voice of thunder.

At the same moment another pirate grasped Hunter's musket by the muzzle,
wrenched it from his hands, plucked it through the loophole, and, with
one stunning blow, laid the poor fellow senseless on the floor.
Meanwhile a third, running unharmed all round the house, appeared
suddenly in the doorway, and fell with his cutlass on the doctor.

Our position was utterly reversed. A moment since we were firing, under
cover, at an exposed enemy; now it was we who lay uncovered, and could
not return a blow.

The log-house was full of smoke, to which we owed our comparative
safety. Cries and confusion, the flashes and reports of pistol-shots,
and one loud groan, rang in my ears.

"Out, lads, out and fight 'em in the open! Cutlasses!" cried the
captain.

I snatched a cutlass from the pile, and someone, at the same time
snatching another, gave me a cut across the knuckles which I hardly
felt. I dashed out of the door into the clear sunlight. Someone was
close behind, I knew not whom. Right in front, the doctor was pursuing
his assailant down the hill, and, just as my eyes fell upon him, beat
down his guard, and sent him sprawling on his back, with a great slash
across his face.

"Round the house, lads! round the house!" cried the captain, and even in
the hurly-burly I perceived a change in his voice.

Mechanically I obeyed, turned eastward, and, with my cutlass raised, ran
round the corner of the house. Next moment I was face to face with
Anderson. He roared aloud, and his hanger went up above his head,
flashing in the sunlight. I had not time to be afraid, but, as the blow
still hung impending, leaped in a trice upon one side, and missing my
footing in the soft sand, rolled headlong down the slope.

When I had first sallied from the door, the other mutineers had been
already swarming up the palisade to make an end of us. One man, in a red
nightcap, with his cutlass in his mouth, had even got upon the top and
thrown a leg across. Well, so short had been the interval, that when I
found my feet again all was in the same posture, the fellow with the red
nightcap still halfway over, another still just showing his head above
the top of the stockade. And yet, in this breath of time, the fight was
over, and the victory ours.

Gray, following close behind me, had cut down