The desperadoes already mentioned, were all armed with boarding pikes, or cutlasses, while several had large brass bell-mouthed _trabucos_, or blunderbusses, which threw five or six musket-balls at a discharge. Most of them were naked to their trowsers, and they all wore a blue, yellow, or red sash, drawn tight round the waist, through which several had pistols stuck; while their heads were covered, in general, by a blue or red cloth cap, like a long stocking, to the end of which was fastened a thick silk or woollen tassel, either hanging down the back, or falling over the side of the head. Some wore shirts of a striped woollen stuff, common amongst the Biscayan boatmen. One elderly man, a large athletic Hercules of a fellow, bareheaded, and very bald; with his trowsers rolled up to his knees, displaying his dark brawny legs and naked feet, dressed in one of the aforesaid striped shirts, and wearing a broad-brimmed, narrow conical-crowned hat, with a flaming red riband tied round it close to the spreading brim, stood in advance of the others, with a _trabuco_ in his hand, the piece held in a way that it might be instantly levelled at us.
These ferocious-looking rascals had most formidable auxiliaries, in three Spanish blood-hounds, as yet held in leather-leashes; but who were jumping and struggling, open-mouthed, and barking, and panting to get at us, until they were almost strangled; their eyes straining in their heads, or rather starting from their sockets, as they champed and dashed the foam right and left from their coal-black muzzles. They were indeed superb creatures, all three of a bright bay colour, and about the height of a tall English stag-hound; but much stronger, as if there had been a cross of the bull-dog in their blood. The moment Lieutenant Sprawl stuck his very remarkable snout over the stockade, several of us having scrambled up abreast of him, the man already mentioned as apparently the leader of the party hailed--
"_Que quieren ustedes--somos Españoles--y unde esta la guerra entre ustedes i nosotros._"
He was answered by a volley from all our pieces, and simultaneously, in the struggle to get over, half-a-dozen of us tumbled down, right into the soft mud; those who had the luck to fall on their feet sank to their knees in an instant, whilst several who fell head foremost, left a beautiful cast of their phrenological developements in the mire. We fought with all our might, you may imagine, to extricate ourselves, but two out of the group were instantly pinned in their clay moulds, by the boarding-pikes of the slaver's crew, and died miserably where they fell, while several others were wounded by shot; but more of our fellows continued to pour in after us, and there we soon were, thirty men at the fewest, struggling and shouting, and blazing away, using the dead bodies of our fallen comrades as stepping-stones to advance over; while about fifteen more, as a reserve under little Binnacle, had perched themselves on the top of the stockade in our rear, and kept pouring in a most destructive fire over our heads. The yells of the men, and the barking and worrying of the dogs, who had now been let loose, and who were indiscriminately attacking whoever was next them, were appalling in the highest degree.