ir long knives
out of their hands and disarmed them. As for the skipper of the dhow,
he was a perfect demon, and would have settled Captain Wilson had it not
been for the coxswain of the gig giving him a drive through with his
cutlass just as he had got our captain down and, kneeling on his chest,
was preparing coolly to cut his throat with the keen curving scimitar
that we had seen in his belt. Captain Wilson looked, sir, as pale as a
ghost when he got on his feet again; for although he was as brave an
officer as ever stepped, it does give a fellow a bit of a turn sometimes
to be face to face with death, as he was then, and know that nothing,
probably, can save you!

"When we had got the better hand of the slave crew, in which we did not
quite get off scot-free, five of our men being killed outright and
several wounded with ugly gashes from the sharp knives of the Arabs, we
set about opening the hatches to release the slaves, who had all this
while been kicking up a thundering row below, yelling and hollering as
if they were all being murdered.

"Well, bless you! why, there were no less than three hundred and fifty
crammed in the hold fore and aft on the two decks that were underneath
the main one, and which had not four feet of space between them; the
people, men, women, and children, being packed together so close that
you couldn't have got a sheet of paper edgeways between them. As for
the smell; well, sir, I think you'd prefer that of a gas main just
opened, or the foulest scent you could think of, to what we all smelt in
the hold of that there dhow; for it seemed to smother us and make the
strongest men aboard turn faint just like a girl does when she cuts her
finger and sees the blood.

"After releasing half of them and bringing them up on the upper deck of
the dhow, for there was not space to let the whole of them out of the
hold at once, we had to rig up the masts of the craft again so that she
could make sail, the weather being too ticklish for the _Dolphin_ to
take her in tow; although she did so for awhile, just in order to get a
little further away from the coast, which was not too pleasant a
neighbour with a north-east monsoon blowing and a heavy sea setting in
towards the land.

"By the time we had rigged up jury-masts on the dhow it was dark, so,
warning the prize-crew that was on board, of which I was one, to keep a
sharp look-out and mind that our tow-rope didn't part, Captain Wilson
went back