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Updated: May 6, 2025
I had naturally assumed that they would return with Tars Tarkas the same way that they had come, which would have carried them away from me; but, to my chagrin, they wheeled directly in my direction as they left the room. There was nothing for me but to hasten on in advance and keep out of the light of their torch.
None of the English crews was allowed to go on shore; but the ships were kept ready to weigh at a moment's notice. Daylight had just broken on the 16th of April 1780, when a frigate under a press of sail was seen approaching the bay. A signal was flying from her masthead. It was one which made the British tars shout with satisfaction; it was, "The French have put to sea!"
"As you will, my friend," I replied; "but quickly now, head first, while I cover your retreat." He hesitated a little at that word, for never before in his whole life of continual strife had he turned his back upon aught than a dead or defeated enemy. "Haste, Tars Tarkas," I urged, "or we shall both go down to profitless defeat; I cannot hold them for ever alone."
As soon as the last thoat was unloaded Tars Tarkas gave the command to advance, and in three parties we crept upon the Zodangan camp from the north, the south and the east. About a mile from the main camp we encountered their outposts and, as had been prearranged, accepted this as the signal to charge.
Thuvia, the girl whom I had first freed, soon had the others at liberty. Tars Tarkas and I stripped the bodies of the two therns of their weapons, which included swords, daggers, and two revolvers of the curious and deadly type manufactured by the red Martians.
The loyal tars were as magnanimous as the officers of both ships had proved themselves to be; and they passed the needed articles over the rails, till they exhausted their own supply, hungry as they were after six hours of active duty.
Wilkinson acted as Edgar's second; none of the older ones would act for Condor, but a lad of fifteen, who dared not refuse his request, did so. The combat is best described in the language in which one of the tars who witnessed it related it to his comrades. "I never seed such a thing in all my born days," he said. "It did not look a fair thing, for it was like a man against a boy.
Meanwhile, on the other side of this vessel, Nelson's ship, the Vanguard, bore down on the foe with six flags flying in different parts of the rigging, to guard against the possibility of his colours being shot away! She opened a tremendous fire on the Spartiate at half pistol-range. The muscular British tars wrought with heroic energy at the guns.
First they hauled on board a stout Turk, who did not appear to be much the worse for his flight and ducking, except that he was, not unnaturally, in a dreadful fright. If he had conceived the idea that he had already entered Paradise, the big-whiskered jolly tars, instead of the houris he might have expected to welcome him, must quickly have shown him his mistake.
The broad white gun-deck, scrubbed to a gleaming white by hollystone and limejuice, on which the salt-water sailors gathered for their mess or drill, was replaced by a cramped room, with the roof hardly high enough to let the jolly tars skylark beneath without banging their skulls against some projecting beam.
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