’It seems, however, that the headman of the fishing village at Batu Kring had managed to send off a timely warning.  When the long-boat came abreast of the mosque (which Doramin had built:  a structure with gables and roof finials of carved coral) the open space before it was full of people.  A shout went up, and was followed by a clash of gongs all up the river.  From a point above two little brass 6-pounders were discharged, and the round-shot came skipping down the empty reach, spurting glittering jets of water in the sunshine.  In front of the mosque a shouting lot of men began firing in volleys that whipped athwart the current of the river; an irregular, rolling fusillade was opened on the boat from both banks, and Brown’s men replied with a wild, rapid fire.  The oars had been got in.

’The turn of the tide at high water comes on very quickly in that river, and the boat in mid-stream, nearly hidden in smoke, began to drift back stern foremost.  Along both shores the smoke thickened also, lying below the roofs in a level streak as you may see a long cloud cutting the slope of a mountain.  A tumult of war-cries, the vibrating clang of gongs, the deep snoring of drums, yells of rage, crashes of volley-firing, made an awful din, in which Brown sat confounded but steady at the tiller, working himself into a fury of hate and rage against those people who dared to defend themselves.  Two of his men had been wounded, and he saw his retreat cut off below the town by some boats that had put off from Tunku Allang’s stockade.  There were six of them, full of men.  While he was thus beset he perceived the entrance of the narrow creek (the same which Jim had jumped at low water).  It was then brim full.  Steering the long-boat in, they landed, and, to make a long story short, they established themselves on a little knoll about 900 yards from the stockade, which, in fact, they commanded from that position.  The slopes of the knoll were bare, but there were a few trees on the summit.  They went to work cutting these down for a breastwork, and were fairly intrenched before dark; meantime the Rajah’s boats remained in the river with curious neutrality.  When the sun set the glue of many brushwood blazes lighted on the river-front, and between the double line of houses on the land side threw into black relief the roofs, the groups of slender palms, the heavy clumps of fruit trees.  Brown ordered the grass round his position to be fired; a low ring of thin flames under the slow ascending smoke wriggled rapidly down the slopes of the knoll; here and there a dry bush caught with a tall, vicious roar.  The conflagration made a clear zone of fire for the rifles of the small party, and expired smouldering on the edge of the forests and along the muddy bank of the creek.  A strip of jungle luxuriating in a damp hollow between the knoll and the Rajah’s stockade stopped it on that side with a great crackling and detonations of bursting bamboo stems.  The sky was sombre, velvety,