This time there was no mistake. The men rushed to their positions, and the sudden confusion fell as suddenly into order. Jim found himself standing with his column, his pike grasped firmly in two hands, without quite realizing how it had come about that he was there. Mike was on his right; on his left was a little wild Irishman, and even in the intense excitement of that moment, when he could see the black line of infantry coming down upon them through the heavy dusk of early dawn, he marked the fierce, semi-conscious jabbering of the Paddy, with an inclination to laugh aloud.
'Glory be, they're comin'! they're comin'! they're comin'! Plaze the pigs, I'll have wan! Jist wan 'll satisfy me. Blessed saints, make it the wan that shot O'Keif! Och, they're comin', th' darlin's! Hit home, Tim Canty, an' Holy Mary make it the wan that shot Barty O'Keif!'
Jim's eyes were fixed upon the dark mass charging the stockade. The soldiers were now not more than sixty yards off, and he could see a horseman leading. He heard the order to charge, and heard Lalor's sharp, stern reply. There followed a blast of rifles from the stockade, and the shadowy equestrian figure leading the Imperial infantry became blurred and broken in the dusk and the thin rain, and the riderless horse at the head of the column cantered on, and leapt into the stockade through the smoke.
'First blood!' muttered Mike, as the officer fell.
Finding the attack concentrated on one point of the stockade, Lalor gathered his handful of rifles here, and they met the charge of the regulars with another volley, checking their advance. A volley from the carbines replied, and the lead whistled into the stockade. A pikeman ran forward a few steps, plunged on his face at Jim's feet, and lay still.
'Holy Mother, if I can git wan iv them I'll be content—almost!' continued the little Irishman in his fierce monologue.
'Down, men! Take cover under the logs!' said the captain of the pikes, and Done obeyed with the rest; and crouching there, hearing the cracking of the carbines, the terrible impatience of Canty began to work in his own blood. He felt himself to be utterly useless; his pike was impotent against the carbines of the enemy, and the lust of battle was in him. He burned for the stress of action, longed for the order to dash upon the enemy. It was difficult to repress the impatience that spurred him to jump to his feet, and, calling his mates to follow to throw himself against, the soldiers.
That wait under the logs seemed interminable, and meanwhile the riflemen within the stockade and the carbineers without exchanged several volleys, and in between there was an indecisive pattering of independent rifles, and Jim saw the vague figures of his comrades falling in the gloom, falling falteringly, without apparent motive. He could not connect the discharge of the guns with the dropping of the wounded: it was all so cold-blooded, so dispassionate.
'They're not comin'!' cried Canty, whose frenzy would not permit of his keeping cover. 'Why don't they come on like min? God sind me wan—jist—'
He fell like a man whose legs had suddenly lost all power, and lay there, his face pressed to the moist earth, and Jim felt the dying man's fingers moving upon his leg in a trifling way. Presently a hand clutched his own, and he was drawn down.