Then into the semisilence burst a mighty voice—the battlefield voice of McKay.
"Now! Fire at will!"
The walls spat flame and lead. A scythe of death swept above the ground where stood Schwandorf and his riflemen. The Peruvian half-breeds collapsed and lay still. But Schwandorf, shocked into activity by the impact of that first word, dodged death by an infinitesimal fraction of a second. Hurling himself backward, he struck the earth just as the bullets sped through the air over him. With a lightning rebound he was up while fresh cartridges were jumping into the rifle barrels menacing him. Headlong he dived into the mass of Red Bones just behind. And the next bullets darting after him killed the savages, leaving him unharmed.
The command of McKay and the crack of the rifles sent the quivering Mayorunas into the fight. In a flash every masking tunnel cover was thrown bodily into the air. Before the thunderstruck Red Bones had recovered from the shock of finding their gun-armed leaders annihilated and their mass being swept by swift-shooting rifles hidden in the walls, they beheld a horde of vindictive foes erupting from under those walls like warrior ants rushing from subterranean galleries. A blood-chilling yell of concentrated fury smote their ears; a hastily loosed storm of war arrows and short throwing-spears ripped into their flesh; a swift-running arc of light-skinned men swerved around them, shooting and stabbing as they went. They, who had so exultantly surrounded the homes of women and children, now were surrounded in turn.
From the doorway of Monitaya's maloca the two Brazilians and José now leaped forth and, firing as they ran, dashed to hold the entrance of the other big house. A few arrows whirred around them during their transit, but the shafts were shot hurriedly and missed. Meanwhile the three bushmen were striking down enemies at every flash of their guns, firing with the swift surety of veterans of many a running fight. They reached their objective unwounded; and when they reached it a fringe of dead foes marked their passage along the face of the hostile array. Once within the door, they rapidly reloaded and sprayed lead along the trenches, which, though now nearly full, had become a dead-line past which no Red Bone sought to go.
Up on the earth embankments within the chief's house the four Americans fought steadily on; the soldiers shooting as coolly as if engaged merely in rapid-fire target practice, the silent Rand methodically driving arrows in swift succession from his wall-slit. Arrows thudded thickly into the logs masking them. Bullets, too, slammed into their rampart—bullets from the heavy revolvers of Schwandorf, who, ever keeping himself protected by the bodies of his cannibal allies, shot with both hands as the chance came. And the German could shoot. With only the small gun muzzles as targets, he planted bullets so close as to knock dirt more than once into the eyes of the riflemen and render them momentarily useless. After a time he got a bullet fair into a loophole.
Knowlton grunted suddenly, swayed back, toppled, fell down the parapet. For a few seconds he lay still.
"Looey!" howled Tim. "How ye fixed? Hurt bad?"
The lieutenant heaved himself into a sitting position, stared around, clapped a hand to his right shoulder, looked at the red smear his palm brought away, reeled up, and scrambled back to his rifle. Schwandorf's bullet had drilled clear through the shoulder, and in falling his head had struck one of the upright poles. Without a word he got his gun into action once more, shooting now from the left shoulder. Tim, with a tight grin of relief, devoted himself once more to trying to shoot down the dodging German.
The encircling Mayorunas, their first paroxysm of fury vented, now settled in cold hate to their work. On all sides their clubmen and spearmen were bludgeoning and stabbing at the close-packed Red Bones, leaping in, killing, springing back and onward with terrible efficiency. Beyond these a thin but deadly line of bowmen poured arrows in high-looping curves over the heads of the hand-to-hand combatants, the shafts whizzing far up, turning, and plunging down unerringly into the center of the enemy force. Each of those arrows could, and many did, end the lives of two or three adversaries by gouging their skins and letting the fearful wurali into their blood. The blowgun men too were darting into every opening, handling their clumsy weapons like feathers and constantly moving to spy out fresh targets.