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Updated: June 14, 2025
If he be indifferent about the fate of the shark, it is speedily dragged forward to the forecastle, amidst the kicks, thumps, and execrations of the conquerors, who very soon terminate his miserable career by stabbing him with their knives, boarding-pikes, and tomahawks, like so many wild Indians.
Besides these guns, she had an ample supply of cutlasses, pistols, and boarding-pikes, to enable her crew to repel an attack made by boats or from a hostile craft which might run alongside her. She was truly an Arab of the seas, with every man's hand against her, and her hand against every man.
As soon as our people had breakfasted, I proceeded with a small party of men to sound and to mark with boarding-pikes upon the ice the most direct channel we could find to the anchorage, having left directions for every other officer and man in both ships to be employed in cutting the canal.
"Come out, sir," repeated the captain. "Not I, by God!" replied the sailor, coolly. The boarding-pikes, which had been lashed round the spanker-boom, had been detached, either from the shot of the enemy, or some other means, and were lying on the deck, close to the cabin skylight. The captain seizing one, and poising it brandished over his head, a third time ordered the sailor to leave the boat.
We now descended, and commenced at once to form our raft. We had few materials, and our only tools were the knives and the heads of the boarding-pikes. We first made a framework of the spars; and then, knocking the hen-coop to pieces, we nailed the planks on to the top, securing the whole fabric more firmly with ropes.
And they were leaderless, for Ned Rackham had been dragged aside with the marks of the boatswain's fingers on his throat and a sheath-knife buried in his side. He was alive but nobody paid heed to his groans. With the skipper in the thick of it, there was no danger of being penned in the forecastle again. The pirates were crowded aft, step by step, before the play of those wicked boarding-pikes.
He walked slowly to the side, and peered at the coming boats, while Hilary stood fretting and fuming at his side. There was, however, something so ominous in the look of the boats, dimly-seen though they were through the murky night, that the lieutenant did give orders, and cutlasses and boarding-pikes were seized, the men then clustering about their officers.
The heat was great, and the men picked out spots on the deck where the sails threw a shade, and dosed off to sleep. They had, long before, made every preparation; the cutlasses had been ground, the boarding-pikes sharpened, and the pistols loaded and primed. Piles of shot lay by the side of the guns, and it needed only to fetch up the powder cartridges from the magazine to be ready for action.
"No colonel, your leg'll bear witness to that," said the skipper as he turned to me. "Run down quickly, Haldane, to the arm chest in my state room here are the keys and pick out a dozen or so cutlasses and boarding-pikes, with a revolver apiece for all on the quarter-deck, and half a dozen rounds of ammunition. You can get Weston to help you to bring the lot up here.
The whole side bristled with boarding-pikes, and as we attempted to climb up, muskets and pistols were discharged in our faces, and tomahawks and sabres came slashing down on our heads. Our men cheered and grasped hold of the ship's sides, but again and again were thrust back, and then the Frenchmen leaped into our boats, making a dashing effort to drive us out of them.
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