oad the guns in those days. Three hundred yards, two hundred and
fifty, men dropping all the way, two hundred yards; Old Frank for all
his one ear had terrible eyes; it was pistols now, they had fired all
their muskets; a hundred and fifty; Shard had marked the fifties with
little white stones. Old Frank and Bad Jack up aloft felt pretty
uneasy when they saw the Arabs had come to that little white stone,
they both missed their shots.

"All ready?" said Captain Shard.

"Aye, aye, sir," said Smerdrak.

"Right," said Captain Shard raising a finger.

A hundred and fifty yards is a bad range at which to be caught by
grape (or "case" as we call it now), the gunners can hardly miss and
the charge has time to spread. Shard estimated afterwards that he got
thirty Arabs by that broadside alone and as many horses.

There were close on two hundred of them still on their horses, yet the
broadside of grape had unsettled them, they surged round the ship but
seemed doubtful what to do. They carried swords and scimitars in their
hands, though most had strange long muskets slung behind them, a few
unslung them and began firing wildly. They could not reach Shard's
merry men with their swords. Had it not been for that broadside that
took them when it did they might have climbed up from their horses and
carried the bad ship by sheer force of numbers, but they would have
had to have been very steady, and the broadside spoiled all that.
Their best course was to have concentrated all their efforts in
setting fire to the ship but this they did not attempt. Part of them
swarmed all round the ship brandishing their swords and looking vainly
for an easy entrance; perhaps they expected a door, they were not
sea-faring people; but their leaders were evidently set on driving off
the oxen not dreaming that the Desperate Lark had other means of
travelling. And this to some extent they succeeded in doing. Thirty
they drove off, cutting the traces, twenty they killed on the spot
with their scimitars though the bow gun caught them twice as they did
their work, and ten more were unluckily killed by Shard's bow gun.
Before they could fire a third time from the bows they all galloped
away, firing back at the oxen with their muskets and killing three
more, and what troubled Shard more than the loss of his oxen was the
way that they manoeuvred, galloping off just when the bow gun was
ready and riding off by the port bow where the broadside could not get