"Oui, m'sieu."
The gunner stepped from the huddled ranks of the after-guard.
"We attack."
But indeed the attack was made upon us. We had not advanced four paces from the shelter of the blockhouse when fifty or sixty of the invaders stormed out of the night, howling and waving their cutlasses. We fired one smashing volley that dropped a fourth of them, and charged. A few pistol-shots met us, but most of the Walrus' men had discarded their muskets, preferring to fight sailor-fashion with the cutlass, and they were utterly disheartened by the unexpectedness of the reception we gave them.
Murray's slender dress-sword was a bodkin of death which pricked a path through the densest ranks. On one side of him Peter swung a clubbed musket which shattered heads and limbs at every step. On his other side Coupeau wielded a cutlass with equal effect.
A yellow crescent moon was riding over the treetops, and we halted in the gap the attackers had torn in the stockade to survey our situation by its light. Half-way down the hill a group of the Walrus' men rallied and commenced to fire up at us; and Coupeau was for pushing after them, but my great-uncle checked him.
"No, no, Coupeau! Yonder is John Silver, astraddle of the stockade. See, he is helping up another fellow. They have been cut off by our charge, and if you please, we'll deal with them first."
I will admit a pang of sympathy for Silver. He was not more than twenty yards from us, and by dint of well-nigh incredible efforts, with the other man to boost him, he had succeeded in scaling the stockade and was sitting there, with his one leg dangling inside. When we discovered him he started to swing his leg over the top, evidently intending to abandon his companion. But whether because of something the other man said or because he feared he must injure himself in dropping the eight feet to the ground without any one to check his fall, he abruptly changed his mind and faced about toward us very resolutely, seizing hold of the crutch which hung from his neck by its thong.
The man at the foot of the stockade gathered himself together like a coiling serpent and plucked a long knife from his belt. He had been in the shadow until then, but now the moonlight shone over his torso and we recognized him for the blind man, Pew. He had lost his green eyeshade, and his pockmarked face was cadaverous in the yellow glow. His eyes were open, and they seemed to smolder dully as they strained at us. His knife glinted in his hand.
"Will you be assisted down and be hanged whole, or must we cut you down, Silver?" hailed Murray.