“That is the question, my friends—why are we here assembled? I answer, for the good of the people; we are here to protect them if we can, and to perish for and with them, if we must. I cannot forget my duties to my country, and to those in whose behalf I stand before the grim Skeleton Crew and the swords of Captain Jack’s men.
“These teach me, and I would teach it to you, my friends—to fight—to hold out to the last.
“We may not think of parleying with those in the Block-House, my friends, until other hope is gone. Whatever be the peril, till that moment, be it mine to encounter it.
“Whatever be the privation, till that moment I am the man to endure it.
“Be it for me, at least, though I stand alone in this particular, to do for the people whatever wisdom or valour may do, until the moment comes which shall call on us to pardon the villains.
“The question now, my friends, is simply this—has that moment come or not? I pause for a reply.”
“Who talks of parleying with them?” growled a smith, as he cast a glance of ferocity at the speaker. “Who talks of parleying at all to these cursed bloodhounds, that hunt for nothing but our blood? We cannot parley if we would—we must fight, die, do anything but parley with the fiends.”
“So say I—I am ready to fight and die for my country. I say it now, as I have said it a hundred times before, but—”
The speech which Tim had thus begun, the smith again interrupted with a greater bull-dog expression than ever—
“Ay, so you have, and so will say a hundred times more—with as little sense in it one time as another. We are all here to die, if there’s any need for it; but that isn’t the trouble. It’s how we are to die—that’s the question. Are we to stay here and be shot like timber-rats, or to volunteer, as I do now, axe in hand, to go and cut down the palings that immediately join the house? By that we may have a clear dig at the savages inside. I’m for that. If anybody’s willing to go along with me, let him up hands—no talk—we have too much of that already.”