He dropped one man, and the others raged at him.  He dropped a second, and still with an impotent courage they stood their ground.  He brought a third shrieking to the deck, and then, and not before, did the others turn to run, and he shot a fourth to hurry their going.  Then he turned to the rowers in the lifeboat.  “Give way, you thieves,” he shouted at them; “set me aboard whilst the coast is clear.—­Mr. Mate, round her up under those davit tackles.”

Again the Krooboys tried to prevent the boarding, but again the fire of that terrible revolver drove them yelping to shelter, and the boat drew up with a bump and a swirl under the dangling ropes.  Kettle clambered forward along the thwarts, and swarmed up one fall with a monkey’s quickness, and the Mate, a man of wooden courage, raced him up the other.  Sheriff could not climb; they had to haul him up the ship’s side by brute force in a bowline; and providentially they were allowed to do this uninterrupted.  The foreign crew of the lifeboat, limp with scare, would have been mere slaughter-pigs on board even if they could have been lured there, which was improbable, and so they were bidden to haul off out of shot, and wait till they were needed.

Now there was no question here of risking a hand-to-hand encounter.  The Krooboys on board mustered quite fifty head, and most of them were men of enormous physical strength.  So the three invaders went into the chart-house, from the ports of which they could command the bridge deck and the main fore deck, and shot the door-bolts by way of making themselves secure.  The walls were of iron, and the roof was of iron; the place was a perfect stronghold in its way; and as there was no chance of its being stormed without due notice, they tacitly called a halt to recover breath.

“Here,” said Sheriff, “is the poor old skipper’s whisky.  I guess a second mate’s nip all round will do us no harm.”

“Here,” said Kettle, “are the old man’s Canary cigars, nice and black and flavory, and I guess one of them’s more in my line, sir, thanking you all the same.  I haven’t come across a Christian smoke for more dreary months than I care to think about.”

The Mate was peering through one of the forward ports.  “There’s the door of my room wide open,” he grunted.  “I bet those new clothes of mine are gone.  They’re just the thing to take a nigger’s eye—­good thick blue broadcloth.”

Captain Kettle wiped the perspiration from his forehead with a bare, sinewy arm.  “Now,” he said, “enough time’s been wasted.  We must keep those toughs on the move, or they’ll find leisure to think, and be starting some fresh wickedness.”

“If we go out of this chart-house,” said Sheriff doubtfully, “they’ll swamp us by sheer weight.  You must remember we’ve only got two pistols, yours and mine.  The poor old skipper’s is lost.”

“I’m going to try what a little quiet talking-to will do first, sir.  I used to be a bit useful with my tongue, if I haven’t lost the trick.  But before that, I’m going to borrow this white drill coat and pants of your late old man’s, if you don’t mind.  You’d hardly think it, sir, if you knew the trials I’ve gone through in that beastly Africa, but I believe it’s the want of a decent pair of trousers that’s hurt me more than anything.”