The wind was dropping still and by the time the Desperate Lark had come to the edge of that part of the forest through which Shard had laid his course the Arabs were no more than five knots away.  He had sailed East half a mile, which he ought to have done overnight so as to be ready, but he could not spare time or thought or men away from those twenty trees.  Then Shard turned into the forest and the Arabs were dead astern.  They hurried when they saw the Desperate Lark enter the forest.

“Doing ten knots,” said Shard as he watched them from the deck.  The Desperate Lark was doing no more than a knot and a half for the wind was weak under the lee of the trees.  Yet all went well for a while.  The big tree had just come down some way ahead, and the ten men were sawing bits off the trunk.

And then Shard saw a branch that he had not marked on the chart, it would just catch the top of the mainmast.  He anchored at once and sent a hand aloft who sawed it half way through and did the rest with a pistol, and now the Arabs were only three knots astern.  For a quarter of a mile Shard steered them through the forest till they came to the ten men and that bad big tree, another foot had yet to come off one corner of the stump for the wheels had to pass over it.  Shard turned all hands on to the stump and it was then that the Arabs came within shot.  But they had to unpack their gun.  And before they had it mounted Shard was away.  If they had charged things might have been different.  When they saw the Desperate Lark under way again the Arabs came on to within three hundred yards and there they mounted two guns.  Shard watched them along his stern gun but would not fire.  They were six hundred yards away before the Arabs could fire and then they fired too soon and both guns missed.  And Shard and his merry men saw clear water only ten fathoms ahead.  Then Shard loaded his stern gun with canister instead of shot and at the same moment the Arabs charged on their camels; they came galloping down through the forest waving long lances.  Shard left the steering to Smerdrak and stood by the stern gun, the Arabs were within fifty yards and still Shard did not fire; he had most of his men in the stern with muskets beside him.  Those lances carried on camels were altogether different from swords in the hands of horsemen, they could reach the men on deck.  The men could see the horrible barbs on the lanceheads, they were almost at their faces when Shard fired, and at the same moment the Desperate Lark with her dry and suncracked keel in air on the high bank of the Niger fell forward like a diver.  The gun went off through the tree-tops, a wave came over the bows and swept the stern, the Desperate Lark wriggled and righted herself, she was back in her element.

The merry men looked at the wet decks and at their dripping clothes.  “Water,” they said almost wonderingly.

The Arabs followed a little way through the forest but when they saw that they had to face a broadside instead of one stern gun and perceived that a ship afloat is less vulnerable to cavalry even than when on shore, they abandoned ideas of revenge, and comforted themselves with a text out of their sacred book which tells how in other days and other places our enemies shall suffer even as we desire.