CHAPTER XIX.—ONE-TO-TWENTY GIVES TWENTY-TO-ONE THE WORST OF IT.
Hemmed in!” cried Don, as the desperate character of the situation flashed upon him. “Shall we try to cut our way through the gang ahead, or fall back on the pit?”
“Back!” was Jack's prompt rejoinder. “Once prevent the niggers in our rear from crossing the pit, and we're all right. We'll have more fighting room there, anyhow.”
Back they ran, hustling the blacks before them. At the pit matters were even worse than they had feared. Half-a-dozen planks already spanned the chasm, each of them black with natives, who jostled each other in their eagerness to cross, supremely indifferent to the reptilian horrors that awaited them should they lose their balance.
“Hurrah!” shouted Jack, pouncing upon the 'bobbing end of the nearest plank. “Tumble 'em in! To the crocodiles with the beggars!”
Though the occupants of the plank could understand not a syllable of Jack's speech, they readily understood his intention; and crowding back upon each other with warning cries, by their combined weight they hastened the very catastrophe they desired to avert. The plank bent like a bow, snapped in twain, and launched its shrieking burden into the abyss. In their frantic efforts to escape, a number of the doomed wretches clutched at a second plank that happened to lie within reach. Already heavily overloaded, this also gave way, and added its quota to the horrible commotion of the pool. Two planks were thus accounted for.
Meanwhile Don and the blacks had not been slow to second Jack's efforts. By their united strength a third plank was dislodged, and they were in the act of attacking the fourth when their energies were diverted into another channel.
For at this juncture the detachment of natives who had cut off the retreat to the creek suddenly appeared upon the scene. The remaining planks, too, now began to pour the enemy upon the hither side of the pit in steady streams.
The rocky shelf' that here flanked the chasm had, perhaps, a width of three yards, and that portion of it to the left of the creek-tunnel's mouth, where the unmolested planks lay, was speedily packed with natives, armed with formidable pikes and knives, who bore down upon the little group with furious outcries and all the weight of superior numbers. Jack was the first to perceive the danger.
“To the right! It's all up with us if we're surrounded.”
Suiting the action to the words, he darted to the right, closely followed by Don and the blacks. Here they stationed themselves side by side, the timid blacks in the rear, and prepared to meet their assailants.
“Couldn't be better!” was Jack's cheerful comment, as he took a hasty survey of their surroundings. “Wall on our right; pit on left; enemy in front; and elbow-room behind. Say, we'll buckle to with the muskets first, and reserve the cutlasses till it comes to close quarters. Look out; they're coming!”
On came the howling, disorderly mob, maddened by the terrible fate of their comrades, and thirsting for vengeance.
“Ready!”
Together the muskets rose to the level.
“Don't fire too high. Now, let 'em have it hot!”
The walls of the narrow enclosure rocked with the thunderous report. The mob quailed, fell back: “they had no stomach for cold lead.
“That's all right,” said Jack coolly as they rapidly reloaded; “but I wish we had breechloaders! A ball, quick!”
The human wave in front, silent except for a sullen murmur that only waited for the rush to be renewed ere it swelled into fury, was again raising its ugly, threatening crest.
“I doubt if we check it this time,” said Don, watching it with anxious eyes; “they've seen us reload, and know where they have the advantage. Better get your cutlass——”
“Ready!” cried his companion.
The wave, broke. A hoarse roar, a tumultuous rusk such as it seemed no human power could withstand, and it was upon them. Again the walls leapt to the thunder of the muskets; again the serried ranks quailed. But before the smoke had left the muzzles of the muskets, the wave swept on again with redoubled fury, poured itself upon and around the brave lads, swept them off their feet For a moment it seemed as if the death-balance must kick the beam.
But the “final tussle” was not to be just yet. Spottie and Puggles, terrified into momentary daring by the imminence of their own danger, now threw themselves into the fray with an energy-which, if it did little execution, at least served to divert many a blow from their masters. No mean help that—to take the blows meant for another.
Nor were the masters themselves slow to recognise and profit by this fact. Right and left they slashed, dealing terrific swinging blows when, they could get them in, lunging desperately at the sinewy, half-naked forms about them when they could not, until British pluck and British muscle told, as they ever must in a righteous struggle for life and liberty, and One-to-twenty found itself clear of the mêlée, with a ghastly ridge of wounded at its feet, and fighting room behind.
Well they had it! For the space of one deep breath the disconcerted rabble suspended hostilities, as if unable to believe that Twenty-to-one had got the worst of it. Then their ranks closed up into a solid mass of dusky, perspiring, blood-stained forms, and the onslaught was renewed—not hurriedly now, but with a watchful determination, a guarded, fierceness, that forced One-to-twenty back foot by foot until but little room was left for fighting, and none, in sooth, for quarter when it should come, as soon it must, to the sheer wall and the bitter end.
Once more the blacks had slunk to the rear—had, in fact, already reached the wall, where, since they could get no farther, they cowered in miserable anticipation of speedy death. The “final tussle” was not far off now. Don and Jack had barely room to swing their cutlasses in. So much of the rocky ledge as might be measured by a single backward stride—only that separated them from the wall and the last scene of all. Inch by inch, their teeth hard set, their breath coming and going in quick, laboured gasps, they contested this narrow selvage of life. So the balance hung, when there came a second momentary lull in the deadly game of give and take. The dusky foe could now afford to breathe, being confident of the issue.
Keeping a wary eye upon their movements, Don seized his chum by the hand. “I never thought it would come to—to this, old fellow,” he said huskily; “God knows I didn't!”
Jack swallowed hard several times before he could trust himself to reply. “No more did I. But were not going to funk now, old fellow; and—and I'm glad it's to be together, anyhow!”
One mute, agonised look into each other's eyes; one last pressure of the hand, and again, shoulder to shoulder, they faced the foe and the inevitable end.
At this instant, when it seemed that not a ghost of a chance remained, there arose on their immediate right a shrill chattering sound—a sound that, somehow, had in it a ring of joyousness so strangely out of keeping with the situation that Don turned with a start and a sudden thrill of hope towards the quarter whence it came. As he did so, his eyes fell upon Bosin, forgotten in the heat of the fray, and now perched—good God! upon what?
Don clutched his companion's arm and pointed with unsteady finger.
“Look!”