"Nay, sahib," replied the jumadar, shaking his head significantly; "your slave is quite ignorant of this matter."

"Holla, Kureem! hast watched the dingy?" I demanded, turning aside and accosting the peon.

"Ay, sahib, but it lies now on the lee of yon sand-bank, far down the channel,” replied Kureem, indicating at the same time to the left.

"Come, goleeah, climb up to the mast-head," I cried, "and tell what thou seest."

"There is no dingy in sight," cried the goleeah, after bounding up aloft like a flying squirrel.

"No! Is there, indeed, naught to be seen now?" I demanded.

"Nothing, sahib," replied the goleeah."Yet, stop: ha, yes! there again, two men are creeping along the sand of the furthest-off shoal; now they crouch down. Ha, they have disappeared !"

"Enough, come down," said I. “Well, jumadar, why linger here any longer? That same dingy must be overhauled, if possible; the craft looks suspicious. Most assuredly the men on board her are either the muhajun's people, or else decoits. Did not some of them leap out of the stranded budgerow? What say ye all?" I resumed, appealing to the burqundazes, and whetting their appetite for plunder. "Mayhap some rich booty is aboard."

""Tis well," answered the jumadar, after a brief deliberation with his men; "the hokm is very good."

"Prepare to start," said I," and leave three of the burqundazes here as a guard with the beauliah in my absence; I shall join you as a volunteer."

"Good, good! wherever there is a tumashu, or tilting match in hand, there will the sahib log be always found," answered the jumadar, laughingly; and forthwith he proceeded to tell off his men for the duty, who clam

bered up into the beauliah successively, each with his sword and shield.

"A gold mohur to each man of you that will follow me!" I cried, wheeling round, and addressing my beauliah's dandees; for the jumadar had reported that his followers were desperately fagged with pushing down so fast.

The goleeah, nobly answering the summons, stepped forward as a volun

teer.

"What! no one else?" I exclaimed, affecting some surprise: "has gold lost its charm?"

"Sahib, I go," cried the goleeah's brother; a squat, but sinewy fellow withal, who slowly began to shuffle along the deck with an air of dogged resolution.

"Bravo!" said I; "thou art a lad of metal."

"Salaam, sahib," said the peon, bluntly, at the same time picking up his brass-studded shield, "shall Kureem be left behind? You, father and mother, sahib (an oriental hyperbole), of a surety thy servant will not willingly tarry behind in this hour of danger!"

"Nobly spoken! thou art a brave fellow, and shalt go likewise. Away!" said I, motioning with my hand to my volunteers to leap into the pulwar.

"Get ready the sweeps-quickly, ho!" cried the jumadar.

"Hurreedas, be vigilant!" said I, buckling on my sword, and sticking a brace of pistols in my belt; "keep a bright look out, old boy. Hallo, manjhee! stir not from this spot at your peril, and moor fast with the sandbank again. Dost attend? — speedily now!" and having given my orders, I stepped after my three recruits into the pulwar.

At the jumadar's signal, the pulwar glanced past the beauliah and the other craft like a rocket, and rapidly shot down the innermost channel.

sluggishly in snaky coils along the The windings of the further shore. headland which so recently had been the scene of strife and rapine was soon left far astern; yet, nevertheless, the site of this prominent landmark could still vaguely be descried through the

Mæhur; a gold coin.

haze by the dull red glare from the half-smothered embers of the muhajun's fleet. From time to time, as the smouldering masses were fanned into life by gusts of wind, a bright wavering pillar of flame, startling as the gleam of a signal-fire, overtopped the brushwood.

The breeze blew fair; momentarily the favouring current waxed stronger, and the sweeps were handled with right good will. As the pulwar skimmed onward steadily, close alongside the sandy shoals which seemed stretching out into infinitude, the clangour of the scared clouds of waterfowl, more deafening than the cawings of innumerable rookeries, prevented further conference; and I dreaded much lest this untimely uproar might give the alarm to the decoit's sentinels (if our suspicions that the men on board the dingy were in reality the pirates should prove correct), and notify our advance.

The jumadar waved his hand impatiently, and seemed by the rapid moving of his lips to be adjuring the screaming legions aloft to cease their ear-splitting clamour, with about as much success as attended the efforts of the haughty Persian, who wished at a word to enchain the boundless main by throwing shackles into its waves. Se

veral times I essayed to speak; but one might have as well expected to be heard above the cory-vrekan's stunning boom, or amid the thunders of the surf on the Coromandel coast,-so, crouching down, I overhauled the pulwar fore and aft, inspected the arms and equipments of the burqundazes, and took an exact scrutiny of the combined forces in chase of the dingy.

The whole of the police patrol on board were Mahommetans to a man. Certain of the swordsmen, with their black bushy hair, flash turbans jauntily stuck on, and broad, gaudy cummerbunds, were particularly wild, rakishlooking fellows; and the numerous notches in their battered, small, round shields, seemed to betoken smart service. Ten of the burqundazes carried matchlocks, about the length and size of long duck-guns; and ever and anon kept puffing at their lighted matches with as much gusto, apparently, as if they had been whiffing away some prime cheroots instead.

The jumadar was as swarthy as an Ethiopian, with full round features, and Moorish cast of physiognomy. His eyebrows were finely arched; and no perfumed and braided Russian attaché of legation could have had his hair and moustaches arranged with more scrupulous nicety. His age might be about five-and-fifty, and his goatish beard had undergone some staining process,—

"The upper part of which was whey, The nether orange, mixed with grey." A crimson-embroidered vest peeped through the slit on the left breast from beneath the white muslin frock. A serviceable looking dagger was stuck in a voluminous Cashmere shawl encircling his waist. He carried carelessly in his hand his red Morocco-sheathed scimitar, and from time to time abruptly withdrew the crooked blade, and again returned it within the scabbard with a violent jerk. In his mode of expressing himself there was a quaintness, along with an abrupt and facetious raillery, occasionally comical; but the restlessness and excitement in his manner and speech wofully betrayed that every precept inculcated in the Koran of the Prophet had not been rigidly adhered to: in fact, the truth must not be longer withheld,—the jumadar had not yet become a member of the Asiatic Temperance Society, while in the glistening of his dark eye, the bang-smoker and opium-eater stood confessed. A squab, dwarfish lad, posted close at hand, carried the jumadar's rusty bundook, an antiquelooking piece, furnished, however, with a puttar-kulla, or flint-lock.

"Softly! rest on your sweeps," I cried, as soon as I succeeded in effecting a hearing, just as we emerged from the innermost channel, and were rustling through a broad patch of reeds that partially choked up the muddy bar at its mouth.

paratively fresh and vigorous, recoiling from danger, shrunk back, and wavered.

"Come, goleeah," I cried; "no hesitating or shrinking, mind ye; no gold mahurs if ye leave us in the lurch now. Come, cheerily handle your sweeps briskly."

The goleeah and his brother hung back for a moment; but the mention of gold, like a restorative cordial, or talisman, seemed to possess a revivifying power; and, apparently renerved with courage screwed up to the sticking-place, they manned the sweeps

What was the motive that prompted this new move,-whether the decoits intended there to run the dingy ashore, or merely glance close by, and escape by running under its lee, thereby throwing their pursuers off the scent, it was impossible to divine. Be that as it may, the burqundazes, anticipating some manœuvre, followed as stanchly in the pirate's wake, and yelled as fiercely as Cuba bloodhounds in full cry; but just as the dingy, closely hugging the island, was skimming past the very outermost ledge, it was seen to ground suddenly, and remain firinly stranded.

The Mussulmans shouted exultingly, and in a frenzy of joy fired off their matchlocks right and left, at random, to the imminent jeopardy of the heads and turbans of the men working the sweeps.

"Can water-rats be drowned ?" cried the jumadar, triumphantly, espying the pirates leaping overboard, and essaying to shove off their stranded bark. To juhunnum with them; may the alligators snap them up!"

"Push on-push on !" Kureem shouted; but, despite every inspiriting cry of the peon and jumadar, the pulwar unaccountably lagged behind, and tardily made up our lee-way. There was manifestly a hitch somewhere; the

sweeps, to be sure, creaked loudly as before; but the pulwar did not quiver throughout its every timber as formerly, at every stroke; and it seemed as though the current alone drifted us nearer. I turned round. Lo! the Hindoos were handling their sweeps gingerly, as if they had been bars of heated iron.

"Art asleep there, goleeah?" I shouted; "call ye this pulling with vigour? Henceforward cease this trifling; ply your arms to more purpose. What art fumbling at?"

"Coward, soour, what dost dread?" cried the jumadar. "Ho! Hosuen, change berths with the dandees."

Accordingly, the Hindoos were hauled forwards, and stationed midships, where they would be comparatively shielded from danger, and the battle's brunt. While yet far distant, our matchlock-men began to blaze away fiercely, after a most irregular and disorderly fashion, apparently with no other aim in view than that of diffusing terror, and certainly with no other effect than startling the decoits, and stimulating them to redouble their efforts at release. In fact, this unwarrantable expenditure of ammunition, instead of damaging the enemy in the least, on the contrary, recoiled back on our own heads, by retarding our coming to close quarters; for, upon each volley, the men at the sweeps, cowering to a side, slunk from their posts,thus causing the pulwar repeatedly to yaw-to, and become unmanageable.

"Ye fools!" cried the jumadar, in a voice of thunder, "ye do more harm than good! Reserve your fire. Hark ye, let no man level his piece until the signal is given-beware!"

So soon as we ran within matchlock shot's range of the stranded dingy, the sweeps were altogether relinquished, and the whole band of burqundazes simultaneously muttering a prayer and tightening their cummerbunds, sprung to their feet in haste. The swordsmen unsheathing their swords, threw down the scabbards; and the matchlock-men stood ready, match in hand, the pulwar all the while being permitted to drop down with the current; but scarce had the craft drifted onward untrammelled some three or four bamboo lengths, when whew! it grated on a sunken shoal, and swung tremulously to and

fro in shoal water close under the lee of the island. It was now but too manifest that the pulwar, in consequence of being a bark of so much heavier burden, could not by any manoeuvring be sheered close alongside the dingy at once, as was formerly determined upon.

"Wab, wah!” cried the jumadar at this juncture," is not the dingy afloat again?"

Such was the tantalising fact. The accursed gang had succeeded at last in heaving off from the quicksand, and, immersed up to their middles in water, were strenuously hauling the dingy across the flats, with loud shouts of triumph and defiance.

"Now, now; stand firm!" shouted the jumadar; "take steady aim-fire!" Upon the first discharge, several wretches, desperately wounded, were seen to flounder about, and plash, right and left, convulsively in the water, with their outstretched hands, until the current finally drifted them away; and, at the second volley from the entire platoon of matchlock-men, the rest of the gang, with one exception, stripped quite naked and glistening with oil, made simultaneous springs out of the water, and glanced away like a shoal of flying-fish pursued by an albicore. A gigantic fellow with a red turban, waving his tulwar, endeavoured, both by precept and example, to rally the panic-struck fugitives, and seemed loath to abandon the dingy to its fate without a tough struggle.

"To juhunnum with you, devil! Whose dog is he? Down with the savage!-shiver the cursed target to fragments!" cried the jumadar, levelling his piece deliberately at the redturbaned desperado.

"Ha, jumadar, you've hit him; he is certainly winged!" said I, as I descried, as soon as the smoke cleared away, the robber-chief's shattered arm dangling lifeless by his side, and the sword drop, with a sudden jerk, from his nerveless grasp. Anon the gigantic pirate, cowering down, slunk away across the shallows like a broken-winged

crane.

Whiz there whistled an arrow within a hair's breadth of my head, and deeply transfixed Hosuen's shoulder. Poor Hasuen, writhing in anguish, hastily raised his hand to his breast with a convulsive start, reeled back, and would have dropped to the bottom of the

pulwar if Kureem had not caught him in his arms.

The jumadar, perfectly frantic with rage, tore off his turban in desperation, and struck his forehead vehemently with his clenched fist; while the trembling Hindoos, cowering down, sought shelter beneath our feet.

Under cover of the jungle, the pirates, rendered desperate by being cooped up in a corner, and ferocious as tigresses bereaved of their whelps, on being forced to throw overboard their illgotten spoil to facilitate their flight, began in right earnest to shew their teeth. A brisk, though desultory fire of matchlocks, began to open upon us, with repeated flights of arrows; but fortunately, volley after volley whistled past harmlessly, or merely riddled the pulwar, both fore and aft, without effecting any other damage than splintering some of the upper timbers, and boring sundry small fissures not bigger than auger-holes in the side below the watermark; through which, however, jets of water began to gurgle.

"Shall the faithful be discomfited by those accursed dogs of burnt fathers? May their households be doomed to perdition!" shouted the jumadar, tearing off long shreds from his turban to plug up the shot-holes.

Meanwhile a dropping, irregular fire, was kept up from the pulwar, with little or no effect apparently; for it seemed impossible to effect a dislodgment, or enfilade thoroughly the position of our invisible foes, who continued to pepper away marvellously fast from behind their barricade of living bamboos.

After endeavouring, for some time, at the urgent solicitation of the jumadar, to withdraw the shaft of the arrow which was sheathed in Hosuen's shoulder-blade far beyond the socket, I desisted abruptly, for the writhings and startling shrieks of the wounded man under the process of extrication began to depress and stagger the minds of his surrounding comrades, who, by huddling too closely together, were evidently fast falling into confusion.

"This random sort of firing will never tell upon the decoits," said I, in a whisper, as the jumadar and I held together a short council of war.

"Khodawund," replied the jumadar, "give but the hoekm, thy slave shall see it obeyed."

""Tis well," said I; "

away with