oo hot for the mongrel lot of
scoundrels whom the pirate captain, or cut-throat, commanded; and they
gave way instanter. Some died fighting to the last; some jumped
overboard, preferring cold water to English cold steel; and the
remainder, some twenty in number, who had escaped the murderous grape
from the guns and the keen cutlasses of the blue-jackets, threw down
their arms and surrendered, when they were driven into the hold, and the
hatches battened down over them.

The fight from beginning to end had not lasted ten minutes; and the
pirate ship was captured in almost quicker time than it had taken to
overcome the original Malay gang on board the _Hankow Lin_.

"Hoist the Union Jack, Snowball," said the lieutenant to the darky, who
had done so much to gain the victory--seeing him with the flag in his
hand, and apparently itching to haul it up. "Hoist away, darky, and let
us have honest colours over that dirty black rag! Now, lads, three
cheers!"

"Lord bless you!" as Bill the boatswain said to his wife when telling
her the story of the pirate's repulse when he got home some time
afterwards, safe and sound, as luck would have it, "you oughter have
just heard the shout that then went up from our throats to heaven! It
sounded a'most like thunder; it were louder nor the report of the
Armstrong guns as peppered the varmint!"

VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER SIX.

"ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL."

To make a long story short, I may state briefly that in the second part
of the action--the second act of a tragedy, it was for the Malays--both
the bluejackets and the men of the _Hankow Lin_ got off scot-free, not
another casualty happening to swell the death-roll, or a fresh wound of
any consequence being received by any of those engaged. The surprise to
the pirates on finding they had "caught a Tartar," instead of assailing
a defenceless merchant vessel, as they had expected, was so complete,
that, in nautical phraseology, they were "taken all aback."

Not expecting any opposition to speak of, and confident that the ship
they were attacking carried no guns--for how could even the most astute
of the Malays have supposed, with all their prying and peeping, that the
_Hankow Lin_ had a set of Armstrongs on board her, headed up in
hogsheads?--the pirates were stupefied by the first broadside they
received; and, after that, their resistance amounted to _nil_,
especially the more as one of the discharges killed their chief, when,
o