The others looked puzzled.
“We will cut up the legs and back into six-inch pieces, sharpen them into wedges, and drive them in all round the door: I think that would withstand any battering until the door itself splintered.”
They all fell to work at once, and in a quarter of an hour a score of wedges were driven in.
“Now we will do the same at the bottom of the church door itself, and put in a few as high as we can reach on each side; that will detain them some time before it yields.”
When this was done, Sarto said, “What next, Percival?”
“The only other thing to be done in the way of defence is to carry all the chairs upstairs to the first story of the tower, to make a barricade there,” Maffio remarked.
“Yes, we might make a barricade of them half way up the stairs, but my main object is to get rid of them here. If they found they could not storm the stairs, they might pile all the chairs in the middle of the church and set them on fire—they are the only things that will burn; and although the flames would scarcely mount to the roof, sparks would fly up, and as there is sure to be a lot of dust and soot on the beams there, which might catch fire, we should be burnt out.”
“Well, at any rate there will be no great trouble in doing that,” Sarto said; “though I should hardly think that they would attempt to burn the church down. The brigands have no respect for life, but they are not without their superstitions, and might be afraid to burn a church, though they would cut half a dozen throats without a scruple.”
“Yes; but a portion of the band are no doubt composed of revolutionists from the mainland—fellows who have no scruples of any sort, and who, as the men of the same kind did in Paris seventy years ago, would desecrate a church in every conceivable manner, for, as a rule, they hate religion as they hate authority.”
The chairs were accordingly carried up and stowed on the wooden floor beneath the bells.