“Poor old chap. But tell him I’ve paid some of the beggars out for it. Mind you tell him—it’ll make him feel comfortable like, and ease his mind.”
I nodded, and then told him about the plan.
“Well,” he said, as he slowly and thoughtfully polished his gun-barrel, “it might do, and it mightn’t. Seems a rum dodge; but, anyhow, we might try.”
“I shall want you to help make the bridge,” I says.
“All right, matey; but I don’t, somehow, like leaving the beggars all that ammunition;” and then he loaded his piece very thoughtfully, but only to rouse up directly after, for the mutineers began firing again; and Captain Dyer giving the order, our men replied swift and fast at every black face that shewed itself for an instant.
That was a day: hot, so that everything you went near seemed burning. The walls even sent forth a heat of their own; and if it hadn’t been for the chatties down below, we should have had to give up, for the tank was now completely dried, and the flies buzzing about its mud-caked bottom. But the women went round from man to man with water and biscuit so that no one left his post, and every time the black scoundrels tried to make a lodgment near the gate, half were shot down, and the rest glad enough to get back into shelter.
Towards that weary slow-coming evening, though, after we had beaten them back—or, rather, after my brave comrades had beaten them back half a score of times—I saw that something was up; and as soon as I saw what that something was, I knew that it was all over, for our men were too much cut up and disheartened for any more gallant sorties.
I’ve not said any more about the guns, only that we spiked them, and left them standing in the market plain, about fifty yards from the gates. I may tell you now, though, that the next morning they were gone, and we forgot all about them till the night I’m telling you of, when they were dragged out again, with a lot of noise and shouting, from a building in the far corner of the square.
We didn’t want telling what that meant.
It was plain enough to all of us that the scoundrels had drilled out the touch-holes again, and that during the night they would be planted, and the first discharge would drive down all our defences, and leave us open to a rush.