The ugly black divil sames to kape a charmed loife, an' I dare say his ould frind below helps him, the nayghur!" Mr Mackay, however, was equally unsuccessful; for, as luck would have it, another of the pirates jumping up in front of the chief received the bullet intended for him.
The scoundrel who got killed was, certainly, one off the list; still, the small fry did not count like their leader, the loss of whom all of us thought might have paralysed the enemy's advance.
It really seemed, however, as if the gigantic villain, who towered over his men, bore a charmed life; for, although our fellows in the tops with the Ennelds, as well the first mate and boatswain, aimed at him, while, now that the proa was within revolver range, the captain and Tom Jerrold, and even I, with my little weapon, pelted bullet after bullet in his direction, all of us missed hitting the swarthy scoundrel.

We noticed, too, on seeing him closer, that he appeared to be more of Pedro Carvalho's nationality than belonging to the Malay race, his features and shape of head being altogether different; albeit, he was fully as ugly as his rascally comrades in the proa and following junks--a hybrid lot of Javanese and Chinese and all the vile scourings of the Straits Settlements; long-haired heavy-eyed and sullen-looking most of them, with narrow retreating foreheads, and evidently of the lowest type of humanity.
As they got closer and closer to the ship, too, we noticed that several had red sashes round their blue frocks, into which were stuck fearful curved knives and the butt-ends of pistols; and so, with "so many Richmonds in the field," it was not to be wondered that Tim Rooney and Mr Mackay had previously missed their mark--albeit now that the proa was near, it was strange that they could not pick off the pirate leader, who, as the proa sheered up alongside the Silver Queen, looked up at us astern and grinned a horrible sardonic grin, drawing the while his solitary left hand across his bare tawny throat with a most unmistakable gesture.
"Ping!--ping!" came from Mr Mackay's and the boatswain's rifles again in quick succession.
And yet again, marvellous as it may seem, they both missed.

There was no longer time, though, for any more pot shots; for, with a wild savage howl and the beating of drums and gongs again, mingled with a shower of jingal balls over the ship, the proa struck against the fore-chains on our starboard bow, one of the junks steering to our port side at the same time, while another remained across our stern and raked us fore and aft with round shot, there being a couple of hundred at least of the bloodthirsty demons in the three craft assailing us.

There were probably as many more, too, in the junks astern, which were coming up more leisurely, leaving their comrades in the van to bear the brunt of the fray.
"Now, men!" shouted "Old Jock," who I must say came out like a brave man and a hero on the occasion, losing all his peculiarities and littlenesses of manner and behaviour--at least we did not notice them.
"Now, men, we've got to fight for our lives! We must first try and prevent the pirates getting aboard; and, when we can't do that any longer and they gain the decks, we'll retreat into the cabin and barricade ourselves, and fight 'em again there." "Hooray!" cried the men.

"Hooray!" "And when we can't hold the cabin any longer," continued Old Jock, who seemed to be in a punning vein this afternoon, "we'll go below to the hold, and hold that as long as we can!" "Hooray!" shouted the hands again, full of the fire of battle now and spurred on by his words.