Half-a-dozen voices replied, loud above all being that of Private Gedge:
“Some one up there, sir, chucking stones down at us.”
“No,” replied Bracy confidently as he shaded his eyes and gazed up; “a stone or two set rolling by a mountain sheep or two. No one could be up there.”
“What!” cried the lad excitedly. “Why, I see a chap in a white nightgown, sir, right up there, shove a stone over the edge of the parrypit, and it come down with a roosh.”
“Was it you who fired?”
“Yes, sir; I loosed off at him at once, but I ’spect it was a rickershay.”
“Keep down in front there, my lads,” said Captain Roberts. “Did any one else see the enemy?”
A little chorus of “No” arose.
“Well, I dunno where yer eyes must ha’ been, pardners,” cried Gedge in a tone full of disgust; and then, before a word of reproof or order for silence could be uttered, he was standing right up, shaking his fist fiercely and shouting, “Hi, there! you shy that, and I’ll come up and smash yer.”
The words were still leaving his lips when Bracy had a glimpse of a man’s head, then of his arms and chest, as he seemed to grasp a great stone, out of a crack five hundred feet above them, and as it fell he disappeared, the sharp cracks of half-a-dozen rifles ringing out almost together, and the stone striking a sharp edge of the precipitous face, shivering into a dozen fragments, which came roaring down, striking and splintering again and again, and glancing off to pass the shelf with a whirring, rushing sound, and strike again in a scattering volley far below.