Chapter Thirteen.
A Sight of the Enemy.
Brace hesitated for a few moments before making any move to go on deck. Then, seeing Briscoe go to the arms rack and return with rifle and ammunition, he followed his example and went on deck, to find the brig swinging gently by its cable and the crew all lying about on the deck to shelter themselves from the sun as well as from the Indians, two of whose arrows were just as they had fallen, sticking upright in the white boards, between the seams of which the pitch was beginning to ooze out, looking bright and sticky in the sun.
“Lie down, sir, lie down!” shouted Dan, and Briscoe dropped flat upon the deck at once, his rifle clattering against the boards; but before Brace was down, a couple of arrows came ping, ping, to stick in the deck, while a third pierced and hung in one of the sails, a fourth dropping with a hiss a little short of the brig and into the water.
“This is nice, Mr Brace,” cried Lynton, laughing. “It’s as the circus clown said, too dangerous to be safe.”
“Yes,” said Dellow, who was crawling towards the starboard bulwark on hands and knees, dragging two rifles after him. “Come and lay hold of one, Jem. Mind you don’t shoot yourself. It’s the wooden end of the rifle that you have to put up against your shoulder, and the hole in the iron barrel which you are supposed to point at the enemy.”
“Is it now?” said the second mate sarcastically. “I’m much obliged and thankye for telling me. You put the bullet in at that end of the gun too, don’t you, and push it through with the ramrod like a popgun, eh?”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Dellow, chuckling; “but hit the poor fellows soft the first time so as not to hurt ’em much. If they get saucy afterwards, why then you must hit hard.”