486. THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES

place, it was a low marshy ground, walled round with a stone wall, piled
up dry, without mortar cr earth among it, like a park, with a little
guard of Chinese soldiers at the doors. Having bought a camel, and
agreed for the price, I came away; and the Chinese man that went
with me led the camel, when on a sudden came up five Tartars on horse-
back; two of them seized the fellow, and took the camel from him,
while the other three stepped up to me and my old pilot; seeing us, as
it were, unarmed, for I had no weapon about me but my sword; which
could but ill defend me against three horsemen. The first that came
up stopped short upon my drawing my sword (for they are arrant
cowards); but a second coming upon my left, gave me a blow on the
head, which I never felt till afterwards, and wondered, when I came to
myself, what was the matter with me, and where I was, for he laid me
flat on the ground; but my never-failing old pilot, the Portuguese (so
Providence, unlooked for, directs deliverances from dangers which to
us are unforeseen), had a pistol in his pocket, which I knew nothing
. of, nor the Tariars neither: if they had, I suppose they would not
have attacked us; but cowards are always boldest when there is no
danger.

The old man, seeing me down, with a bold heart stepneaia up to the
fellow that had struck me, and laying hold of his arm with one hand,
and pulling him down by main force a little towards him with the other,
he shot him into the head, and laid him dead upon the spot; he then
immediately stepped up to him who had stopped us, as I said, and be-
fore he could come forward again (for it was all done as it were in a
moment) made a blow at him with a scimitar, which he always wore,
but missing the man, cut his horse into the side of his head, cut one
of his ears off by the root, and a great slice down the side of his face.
The. poor beast, enraged with the wounds, was no more to be governed
by his rider, though the fellow sat well enough too; but away he flew,
and carried him quite out of the pilot’s reach; and, at some distance,
rising upon his hind legs, threw down the Tartar, and fell upon
him. -

In this interval the poor Chinese came in who had lost the camel,
but he had no weapon; however, seeing the Tartar down, and his horse
fallen upon him, he runs to him, and seizing upon an ugly ill-favoured
weapon he had by his:side, something like a pole-axe, but not a pole-axe
either, he wrenched it from him, and made shift to knock his Tartarian
brains out with it. But my old man had the third Tartar to deal with
still; and, seeing he did not fly as he expected, nor come on to fight
tim; as he apprehended, but stood ‘stock still, the old man stood still
too, avd falls to work with his tackle to Biskes his pistol again; but