I made a mess of them and a muss and muck of their silks ere the multitude could return upon me.
There were so many of them.

They clogged my blows by the sneer numbers of them, those behind shoving the front ones upon me.

And how I dropped them! Toward the end they were squirming three-deep under my feet.

But by the time the crews of the three junks and most of the village were on top of me I was fairly smothered.

The planking was easy.
"God in heaven, what now!" asked Vandervoot, another cuny, when we had been bundled aboard a junk.
We sat on the open deck, like so many trussed fowls, when he asked the question, and the next moment, as the junk heeled to the breeze, we shot down the deck, planks and all, fetching up in the lee-scuppers with skinned necks.