412 ROBINSON CRUSOE.

know what they should do. I immediately called to the men
that worked upon the stages, to slip them down, and get up the
side into the ship, and bade those in the boat to row round and
come on board; and the few who were on board worked with
all the strength and hands we had to bring the ship to rights ;
but, however, neither the men upon the stages nor those in the
boats could do as they were ordered, before the Cochin Chinese
were upon them ; and two of their boats boarded our long-boat,
and began to lay hold of our men as their prisoners.

The first man they laid hold of was an English seaman, a
stout, strong fellow, who, having a musket in his hand, never
offered to fire it, but laid it down in the boat, like a fool, as I
thought ; but he understood his business better than I could
teach him, for he grappled the Pagan, and dragged him by
main force out of their boat into ours, where, taking him by
the ears, he beat his head so against the boat’s gunnel, that the
fellow died in his hands ; and, in the mean time, a Dutchman,
who stood next, took up the musket, and with the butt-end of
it so laid about him, that he knocked down five of them who
attempted to enter the boat. But this was doing little towards
resisting thirty or forty men, who, fearless because ignorant of
their danger, began to throw themselves into the long-boat,
where we had but five men in all to defend it ; but the follow-
ing accident, which deserved our laughter, gave our men a com-
plete victory.

Our carpenter being prepared to grave the outside of the
ship, as well as to pay the seams where he had calked her to
stop the leaks, had got two kettles just let down into the boat,
one filled with boiling pitch, and the other with rosin, tallow,
oil, and such stuff as the shipwrights use for that work ; and
the man that attended the carpenter had a great iron ladle in
his hand, with which he supplied the men that were at work
with the hot stuff. Two of the enemy’s men entered the boat
just where this fellow stood, being in the fore-sheets ; he imme-
diately saluted them with a ladleful of the stuff, boiling hot,
which so burned and scalded them, being half-naked, that they
roared out like bulls, and, enraged with the fire, leaped both
into the sea. The carpenter saw it, and cried out, ‘‘ Well done,
* Jack! give them some more of it ;” and stepping forward him-
self, takes one of the mops, and dipping it in the pitch-pot, he
and his man threw it among them so plentifully, that, in short,
of all the men in the three boats, there was not one that es-
capec being scalded and burned with it, in a most frightful,
pitiful manner, and made such a howling and crying, that I