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Updated: May 21, 2025
`Crash! came the stem of our boat against the side of the batilla at the same time that her old carronade, which had been loaded this time with bullets and scrap iron like a shell, and having its muzzle depressed, went off, right in our faces, with a `Bang!
It was a terrible struggle trying to climb the high overhanging sides of the batilla in the face of such tooth and nail opposition, the beggars fighting, as Mr Gresham had said, like veritable wild cats!
As we approached the dhows, however, Mr Dabchick ordered us to pull easy, singing out to the other boats to spread out to leeward and make for the batilla, which had remained behind like a watchdog guarding the smaller craft, while we attacked her in the bows.
Captain Hankey, who had been pitching shot and shell into them from the moment of our casting off from the Mermaid, some of the missiles describing beautiful curves over our heads as we pulled in, now ceased firing, for fear of hitting us as well as the foe; and so, the Arabs were able to concentrate all their energies towards resisting us, the batilla sending some round shot in our direction from an old brass carronade she had mounted on her high forecastle, one of which, skipping along the water as if it were playing ducks and drakes, shaved off three of our oar-blades on the starboard side.
Poor Mr Doyle died shortly after we effected the capture of the batilla; but, being a quiet, inoffensive sort of man, I don't think his loss affected any one very much, while Mr Chisholm the middy, who was made an acting sub-lieutenant in his place such is the fortune of war was the reverse of sad when he came up to us presently in the whaler, towing the smaller dhow, which he had very pluckily captured to his own cheek.
"Larrikins," said I, whispering in his ear, as we stood up together just in the rear of Mr Dabchick, balancing myself on one of the thwarts forward, being about to make another spring for the side of the big dhow, while Larry shoved a cartridge hastily into the breech of his rifle, and was in the act of taking a pot shot at a chap who seemed to be the skipper of the batilla and had a nose on him like the beak of a Brazilian parrot, "little Dabby means business!"
The reckless beggars, too, were so busy looking out in the direction of the stranded steamer for which they were making, that somehow or other they did not catch sight of us until they were nearly within easy range of our six-inch breechloaders; the leading dhow, which was what the Arabs call a `batilla, and carried two large lugs or lateen sails on wide yards, besides a sort of square jib forwards, rigged out on a bowsprit like a spritsail boom, caught sight of us as we luffed up to let fly at her.
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