He fired on and on with deadly speed and accuracy, till the
heated barrels of the repeaters burned Laura Slade's hands.
The fight was going badly against the factory force. The Okky men's original surprise had been very complete, and they had rushed the outer line of the defences all round. The inner line consisted merely of the buildings; and the factory boys had bolted for these, and had joined the mulatto clerks and the Portuguese who were there already. The whole defence, of course, was badly managed; but then it must be remembered that it was devised by traders, not by soldiers. If it had not been for Carter's education on the moors and warrens of Upper Wharfedale, and his consequent deadliness with a rifle against rushes at close quarters, the factory would have been put to the storm within five minutes of the first attack.
Besides, with a few exceptions, the factory boys were Kroos; and these, though they are magnificent workers and about as amphibious as seals, are emphatically not fighting men. They battled manfully enough after the shock of the first surprise, and because no path of escape offered itself; and whilst there were trade guns to fire, they derived a fine encouragement from the noise of the black trade-powder explosions, and the acrid smell of smoke. But few of them made any attempt to reload their flintlocks a second time, and for cold matchet work at close quarters they had little appetite. So by ones, and twos, and tens, they began slipping off into the bush (to be hunted down piecemeal by the savage enemy later on) and soon only the clerks and the two fever-shaken Portuguese were left alive in the lower buildings.
It was at this point a new engine was added to the attack. Dawn had just leaped up yellow and sickly over the sea, when a crash rang out that jarred the air and every building about the place.
"Hear that?" croaked Carter. "That's a cannon, and a brass one as you can tell by the ring. It's probably one of those old brass guns that the Portuguese used to cast for the natives two hundred years ago. One of my curiosity dealers promised me fifty golden sovereigns for a genuine specimen. If I don't spot that gun and pick off the men who are serving it, they'll jug us for a certainty. But they've got the blessed thing so jolly well hidden among the bush! Well, I'm going to ease up on my own shooting and watch for the next flash. Get me a drink, you plucky darling, will you, or else my throat will crack in two. Bring a chattie of water; that's what I want. The heat of this night has been about the worst I have known on the Coast."
"It is too hot to last," said the girl. "I'm afraid even the water in the chattie will be as warm as tea."
She went into the mess-room, and presently came back on hands and knees to keep below the showers of pot-leg which were persistently whistling overhead, and gave him the wet porous bottle, and crouched beside him under the breastwork as he drank.
"Well, my sweetheart," said Carter, "if it isn't unlucky to drink one's best girl's health in water, here's your toast! You're the finest plucked lassie in all the wide and wondrous earth, and now I come to think of it, I don't believe I ever proposed to you."
"No, you never did. I don't see why you should."