decking. Then men were leaping down, spilling over the rail, overrunning the deck. The seaman who had yelled at me ran forward and a saber swung at his head; it didn’t seem like much of a blow, but he went down, very bloody, and the boarders crowded past, fanning out, yelling like demons. I hugged the deck and tried to look hors de combat. A big barrel-chested fellow swinging a machete with a badly bent blade came bounding my way; I rolled far enough to get a hand on my Mauser and got it up in time and put two through his broad, sweat­-gleaming, hair-matted chest and kicked aside as he fell hard on the spot where I’d been lying. In the mêlée the shots hadn’t been audible.
A little fellow with bare, monkeylike legs was trying to climb the foremast; someone jumped after him,