"Wait and see!" retorted Dennis at random; and his men laughed at the familiar catchword.
There was a great stamping of feet overhead, and Harry Hawke, who chanced to be the last to reach the little door, cast his eyes upward as he was about to enter.
A man's head was looking down, and Hawke fired at it.
The head remained where it was, but the marksman chuckled, knowing his own powers; and as he stepped inside the doorway something splashed on to the pavement where he had stood, something wet that shone very red in the sunshine.
Their haversacks and water bottles brushed against the narrow sides of the winding stairway; and as Rogerson reached the last step a revolver cracked out, and he threw up his arms.
Tiddler immediately behind him caught the falling body on his head and shoulder, and passed his rifle to Dennis.
"Poor old Jim!" muttered Tiddler, as he gripped the dead weight in both hands, and, using the body as a shield, staggered into the bell chamber.
There, in the full blaze of the sun, the bells still dangled from a huge transverse beam; but everything else had been carried away, and the floor presented an open platform exposed to the sky, with a screen of sandbags at its western edge, through which the Germans had worked a Nordenfeldt.
There were only two men, and the one who had emptied his revolver into Jim Rogerson held up his hands, crying in a terrified voice: "Mercy, Kamerad!"
"Yus!" hissed Tiddler, dropping the dead man and snatching his rifle from Dennis's hand before he could interfere. "The mercy you showed to my mate!" And he ran him through.