he captain started back down
the steps until he slipped in the blood that covered them, and fell into
the cabin, with a terrible wound in his side. He then crawled to where
his revolver was, and started up the steps; when half way up, a man
rolled down the steps against him and knocked him over.

"The captain thought it was the coolie, but it proved to be one of the
sailors, who was frightened half to death. All he could say was, to beg
of the captain to save him.

"The captain had his wife and child on board, and his wife was roused by
the tumult. She came to her husband's aid and proceeded to bind up his
wounds. While she was doing this one of the coolies smashed in the
skylight, and would have jumped into the cabin had not the captain fired
at him with his revolver and drove him away.

"The next thing the coolies did was to murder the man at the wheel and
fling his body overboard. Then they murdered the carpenter and a sailor
and disposed of them the same way. Including the two mates, five men
were slain and four others were wounded. The wounded men and the rest of
the crew barricaded themselves in the forecastle for protection, and
there they remained the rest of the night and all through the next day.
The captain and his wife and child stayed in the cabin.

"The two coolies were in full possession of the ship from a little past
midnight until eight o'clock of the following evening. One of them,
venturing near the skylight, was shot in the breast by the captain, and
then the two coolies rushed forward and threw a spar overboard. One of
them jumped into the sea and clung to the spar, while the other dropped
down into the between-decks, where he proceeded to set the ship on fire.
Seeing this, the sailors who had barricaded themselves in the forecastle
broke out, and two of them proceeded to hunt the coolie down with
revolvers. They hunted him out and shot him in the shoulder, and then he
jumped overboard and joined his companion. Shots were fired at the two
men, and soon afterward they sank.

"The fire got such headway that it could not be put out. Finally a boat
was provisioned and lowered; the crew entered it, and after waiting
about the ship during the night in the hope that the flames might bring
assistance, they put up a sail and headed for St. Helena. Thus was a
ship's crew of twenty-three people overawed and rendered helpless by two
slender coolies, whom any one of the Yankee crew could have crushed out
of