"Yes, dear."
"And d'you savvy, Trouble?"
"Savvy plenty. Oh, Carter, I burn my leg plenty-too-much with dem damhot lamp once on steamah. No can see flame when sun lib for shine. I fit for serve as stand-by-at-crane boy once, sar, on steamah."
"Well, Mr. Engineer, throw straight and don't get hoist by your own petard. By the living Jink we're in for it now. Throw, Trouble, for all you're worth, right into the blue of them."
The four-fifty repeater yap-yapped its messages, and the man who had learned to shoot quick and straight amongst the rabbits and grouse of Upper Wharfedale, made deadly practice at this bigger game. But two eight-shot Winchesters are of very little more value than catapults in stopping the rush of two hundred fighting black pagans officered by Moslemin Haûsas. Beforehand the fire of the Portuguese and the factory Krooboys had held them off, much more by its noise than its deadliness. The one solitary shooter who remained, they held in scorn; he was firing white powder in the Winchester, and the smallness of the noise and the absence of smoke encouraged them. They scorned to shoot at him with their flintlocks. They would rush in and put this man to the matchet, and save the girl alive. And thereafter, when they rolled the red head at King Kallee's feet, and made the girl stand up before him, many and fine presents would be given to gladden them and their women.
So they gave the Okky yell, and sprang out of the bush into the open, and rushed across the clearing.
But lo, presently the white man called out, "Behold, I put ju-ju on you blighters," and a black man who carried between his brows the Kroo tribal mark began throwing green tins which contained some liquid distilled by witchcraft. And thereupon the clinging fires of hell broke out amongst them, and burned the skin on their bodies till they screamed and danced in their frenzy of pain, and the air was rich with the smell of their cooking. Even Kwaka, who led them, though he was the boldest fighting man in all King Kallee's armies, showed by the grayness that grew upon his face that he that day learned the lesson of fear. And when presently they broke and fled for the bush (the flames, be it understood, still sticking to them), it was Kwaka who led that disordered retreat, and held a sleeve of his jelab before his eyes lest the white man might bring further witchcraft to bear, which would make his face a derision for the houris in Paradise.
"My Christian Aunt!" said Carter up on the factory veranda, "but benzoline is filthy stuff to fight with. The place stinks like a cookshop, and I feel like a beastly Russian anarchist. Don't throw any more tins, Trouble. We've saved our bacon, Laura, I do believe, but I hate being unsportsmanlike. It's worse than netting your neighbor's grouse moor, this. But they came up to the gun too quick for me to stop them alone. White-Man's-Trouble, if you throw another of those infernal bombs, I'll slip a shot into you."
Laura was crouched in behind the mattress casemate, her face tucked away into the crook of an elbow, and her shoulders heaving with sobs.
"Hullo, old lady, what's the row with you? You're not hit? Good God, don't tell me you're hit. What a careless hound I am to let you get out of cover. I could have sworn there wasn't a shot being fired. What a miserably incompetent brute I am to get rattled and not see after you better."