Jim Davis by Masefield, John, 1878-1967

In another ten seconds a battle was going on in the water all round us. The horsemen urged their horses right up to the sides of the luggers.

The men in the water hacked at the horses' legs with their hangers; the horses screamed and bit. I saw one wounded horse seize a smuggler by the arm and shake him as a dog shakes a rat; the rider of the horse, firing at the man, shot the horse by accident through the head. I suppose he was too much excited to know what he was doing--I fancy that men in a battle are never quite sane. The horse fell over in the water, knocking down another horse, and then there was a lashing in the sea as the horse tried to rise. The smugglers cut at him in the sea and all the time his rider was half under water trying to get up and pulling at the trigger of his useless, wetted pistol.

It all happened so quickly, that was the strange thing. In one minute we were hard at work at the tubs, in the next we were struggling and splashing, hacking at each other with swords, firing in each other's faces. Half-a-dozen horsemen tried to drag the lugger towards the shore, but the men beat them back, knocked them from their saddles, or flogged the horses over the nose with pistol-butts.

All this time the guns were banging, men were crying out, horses were screaming; it was the most confused thing I ever saw.

Marah knocked down a trooper with a broken cleat and shouted to me to cut the cable--which I did at once. One or two men ran to trim sail, and Marah took the tiller. At that moment a trooper rode into the sea just astern of us--I remember to this day the brightness of the splash his horse made; Marah turned at the noise and shot the horse; but the man fired too, and Marah seemed to stagger and droop over the tiller as though badly hit. Seeing that, I ran aft to help him. It seemed to me as I ran that the side of the lugger was all red with clambering, shouting soldiers, all of them firing pistols at me.

Marah picked himself up as I got there. "Out of the way, boy," he cried. Two or three smugglers rallied round him. There were more shots, more cries. Half-a-dozen redcoats came aft in a rush; someone hit me a blow on the head, and all my life seemed to pass from me in a stream of fire out at my eyes. The last thing which I remember of the tussle was the face of the man who hit me. He was a pale man with wide eyes, his helmet knocked off, his stock loose at his throat; I just saw him as I fell, and then everything passed from my sight in a sound of roaring, like the roaring of waters in a spate.

CHAPTER XVI

DRIFTING