There was a pause as Sally struggled with an obstinate latch, then she opened the door at the head of the stairs and disappeared. The removal of the light seemed to soothe the old sailor, since he lay still, while Billy stood listening—listening, for what, he did not quite know.
What he did hear was the sound that of all others he least expected. With a sharp crack that echoed throughout the frail old building, a rifle went off directly overhead. An instant later he heard Sally’s voice, upraised in the terrified screaming of a thoroughly frightened child. He forgot Captain Saulsby completely, forgot everything except that he must run to help Sally. The door on the stairs had swung shut in the draft: it had slammed and latched itself so that he had a moment’s struggle to get it open. When he did so finally and plunged into the room above, he had again to wait for the passage of a second to make out just what was there.
An oil lamp stood upon the table in the middle of the room, but its light beneath the green shade fell in a narrow circle and left all the corners in darkness. He was vaguely aware that there was a man over yonder by the window, and that he held something in his hand over which he worked and muttered. It was a rifle, in whose magazine the cartridge evidently had jammed and had prevented the immediate firing of a second shot. Yet, even as Billy realized that this must be the case, the thing snapped into place and the hammer once more was drawn back with a sharp click. Sally, standing near him, dropped her candle, which fortunately went out, put her hands to her ears, and shrieked aloud,
“Stop him, Billy; he’s going to do it again!” It was not their lives the man was threatening. He crouched over the window sill, steadied the barrel of his weapon against the ledge and took long, deliberate aim. Billy, as he ran across the room, could see over the stranger’s shoulder, down between the trees to the creek and the high rocks at the edge of the little harbour. There on the point in a patch of brilliant moonlight, stood one of the bluejackets who had landed with them. He held a flag in each hand and was spelling out some signalled message in frantic haste. The ship showed vaguely in the dark nearly half a mile away to the eastward, but the moon hung low in the west and evidently formed a sharp background against which the moving flags could be plainly read. It seemed as though the sailor must know what danger threatened to bring his message to an end for he glanced backward over his shoulder more than once, yet never failed to continue swinging his flags with steady precision.
Billy was only quick enough to jerk at the stranger’s arm just as the rifle went off again with a startling crash and a quick spurt of flame. He saw the sailor on the point stagger and drop the flag from his hand; at the same moment he felt a stunning blow upon the side of his head and his shoulder so that he seemed to see, for a second, room, lamp and Sally, all go around and around in confusing circles. He recovered himself quickly, but not in time to intercept the enemy’s next move.
It was one of retreat, for evidently discovery was the thing most dreaded by this hidden stranger of the mill. Billy had only an instant’s view of his face, but he recognized, in that instant, the narrow, black-eyed countenance that had once peered at him from behind the rocks and that had so frightened Johann Happs when it rose above the wall. The man leaped over the window sill and dropped upon the ladder-like stairs outside, but the rotten timbers gave way beneath him and he fell heavily to the ground. The thick bushes below must have broken his fall, however, for he jumped up and made off into the dense undergrowth, while shouts on either hand showed that he was being watched for, and a crashing and tearing of branches indicated that the pursuit was hot.
Billy turned back from the window and went over to Sally.
“Are you hurt?” they both asked each other in the same breath. On being assured that the glancing blow Billy had received was “nothing, just nothing at all,” Sally sighed deeply with relief and picked up her fallen candle.
“It was lucky I did not set us all on fire,” she said shamefacedly. “I—I never could abide things that go off all of a sudden like that. Oh, Billy, what about the Captain?”
This reminder sent Billy downstairs almost as rapidly as he had come up. Captain Saulsby had been struggling to leave his couch again, but so firmly had Sally wrapped him up in blankets that he had only just succeeded in getting free of them and so had managed to do himself no harm. He was very querulous in his complaints when they laid him back upon the pillows, but submitted rather more meekly than before.