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effecting quite as much as obedience. The Arabs, hardest pressed upon,
profited by the pause to fall back on the main body of their friends, near
the raft. This was all Paul could ask, and he ordered the gun to be
pointed at the centre of the group, while he advanced himself towards the
enemy, making a sign of peace.
"Damn 'em, lay 'em aboard!" cried the captain: "no quarter to the
blackguards!"
"I rather think we had better charge again," added Mr. Sharp, who was
thoroughly warmed with his late employment.
"Hold, gentlemen; you risk all needlessly. I will show these poor
wretches what they have to expect, and they will probably retire. We want
the ship, not their blood."
"Well, well," returned the impatient captain, "give 'em plenty of Vattel,
for we have 'em now in a category."
The men of the wilderness and of the desert seem to act as much by
instinct as by reason. An old sheik advanced, smiling, towards Paul, when
the latter was a few yards in advance of his friends, offering his hand
with as much cordiality as if they met merely to exchange courtesies. Paul
led him quietly to the gun, put his hand in, and drew out a bag of slugs,
replaced it, and pointed significantly at the dense crowd of exposed
Arabs, and at the heated iron that was ready to discharge the piece. At
all this the old Arab smiled, and seemed to express his admiration. He was
then showed the strong and well-armed party, all of whom by this time had
a musket or a pistol ready to use. Paul then signed to the raft and to the
reef, as much as to tell the other to withdraw his party.
The sheik exhibited great coolness and sagacity, and, unused to frays so
desperate, he signified his disposition to comply. Truces, Paul knew, were
common in the African combats, which are seldom bloody, and he hoped the
best from the manner of the sheik, who was now permitted to return to his
friends. A short conference succeeded among the Arabs, when several of
them smilingly waved their hands, and most of the party crowded on the
raft. Others advanced, and asked permission to bear away their wounded,
and the bodies of the dead, in both of which offices they were assisted by
the seamen, as far as was prudent; for it was all-important to be on the
guard against treachery.
In this extraordinary manner the combatants separated, the Arabs hauling
themselves over to the reef by a line, their old men smiling, and making
signs of amity, until they were fairly on the rocks. Here they remained
but a very few minutes, for the camels and dromedaries were seen trotting
off towards the Dane on the shore; a sign that the compact between the
different parties of the barbarians was dissolved, and that each man was
about to plunder on his own account. This movement produced great
agitation among the old sheiks-and their followers on the reef, and set
them in motion with great activity towards the land. So great was their
hurry, indeed, that the bodies of all the dead, and of several of the
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wounded, were fairly abandoned on the rocks, at some distance from
the shore.
The first step of the victors, as a matter of course, was to inquire into
their own loss. This was much less than would have otherwise been, on
account of their good conduct. Every man, without a solitary exception,
had ostensibly behaved well; one of the most infallible means of lessening
danger. Several of the party had received slight hurts, and divers bullets
had passed through hats and jackets. Mr. Sharp, alone, had two through the
former, besides one through his coat. Paul had blood drawn on an arm, and
Captain Truck, to use his own language, resembled "a horse in fly-time,"
his skin having been rased in no less than five places. But all these
trifling hurts and hair-breadth escapes counted for nothing, as no one was
seriously injured by them, or felt sufficient inconvenience even to report
himself wounded.
The felicitations were warm and general; even the seamen asking leave to
shake their sturdy old commander by the hand. Paul and Mr. Sharp fairly
embraced, each expressing his sincere pleasure that the other had escaped
unharmed. The latter even shook hands cordially with his counterfeit, who
had acted with spirit from the first to the last. John Effingham alone
maintained the same cool indifference after the affair that he had shown
in it, when it was seen that he had played his part with singular coolness
and discretion, dropping two Arabs with his fowling-piece on landing, with
a sort of sportsman-like coolness with which he was in the habit of
dropping woodcocks at home.
"I fear Mr. Monday is seriously hurt," this gentleman said to the captain,
in the midst of his congratulations: "he sits aloof on the box yonder, and
looks exhausted."
"Mr. Monday! I hope not, with all my heart and soul He is a capital
_diplomate_, and a stout boarder. And Mr Dodge, too! I miss Mr. Dodge."
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