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 them, which seemed to him to show more knowledge of guns than they could have learned on that bright morning.  What, thought Shard to himself, if they should bring big guns against the Desperate Lark!  And the mere thought of it made him rail at Fate.  But the merry men all cheered when they rode away.  Shard had only twenty-two oxen left, and then a score or so of the Arabs dismounted while the rest rode further on leading their horses.  And the dismounted men lay down on the port bow behind some rocks two hundred yards away and began to shoot at the oxen.  Shard had just enough of them left to manoeuvre his ship with an effort and he turned his ship a few points to the starboard so as to get a broadside at the rocks.  But grape was of no use here as the only way he could get an Arab was by hitting one of the rocks with shot behind which an Arab was lying, and the rocks were not easy to hit except by chance, and as often as he manoeuvred his ship the Arabs changed their ground.  This went on all day while the mounted Arabs hovered out of range watching what Shard would do; and all the while the oxen were growing fewer, so good a mark were they, until only ten were left, and the ship could manoeuvre no longer.  But then they all rode off.

The merry men were delighted, they calculated that one way and another they had unhorsed a hundred Arabs and on board there had been no more than one man wounded:  Bad Jack had been hit in the wrist; probably by a bullet meant for the men at the guns, for the Arabs were firing high.  They had captured a horse and had found quaint weapons on the bodies of the dead Arabs and an interesting kind of tobacco.  It was evening now and they talked over the fight, made jokes about their luckier shots, smoked their new tobacco and sang; altogether it was the jolliest evening they’d