carried the bad ship by sheer force of numbers, but they would have
had to have been very steady, and the broadside spoiled all that.
Their best course was to have concentrated all their efforts in
setting fire to the ship but this they did not attempt. Part of them
swarmed all round the ship brandishing their swords and looking vainly
for an easy entrance; perhaps they expected a door, they were not
sea-faring people; but their leaders were evidently set on driving off
the oxen not dreaming that the Desperate Lark had other means of
travelling. And this to some extent they succeeded in doing. Thirty
they drove off, cutting the traces, twenty they killed on the spot
with their scimitars though the bow gun caught them twice as they did
their work, and ten more were unluckily killed by Shard's bow gun.
Before they could fire a third time from the bows they all galloped
away, firing back at the oxen with their muskets and killing three
more, and what troubled Shard more than the loss of his oxen was the
way that they manoeuvred, galloping off just when the bow gun was
ready and riding off by the port bow where the broadside could not get
them, which seemed to him to show more knowledge of guns than they
could have learned on that bright morning. What, thought Shard to
himself, if they should bring big guns against the Desperate Lark! And
the mere thought of it made him rail at Fate. But the merry men all
cheered when they rode away. Shard had only twenty-two oxen left, and
then a score or so of the Arabs dismounted while the rest rode further
on leading their horses. And the dismounted men lay down on the port
bow behind some rocks two hundred yards away and began to shoot at the
oxen. Shard had just enough of them left to manoeuvre his ship with an
effort and he turned his ship a few points to the starboard so as to
get a broadside at the rocks. But grape was of no use here as the only
way he could get an Arab was by hitting one of the rocks with shot
behind which an Arab was lying, and the rocks were not easy to hit