Stan’s next words slipped out unconsciously:
“Why have you put me in the most risky place?”
“Because I saw that you liked shooting since you brought your gun and revolver, and I gathered so, too, from your conversation and the way in which you handled that rifle. Now are you satisfied?”
Stan nodded, and the next minute he was alone, but with men at all the loopholes near.
As soon as he was left to himself a peculiar chill came creeping over him. Blunt’s words seemed to be ringing in his ears about being face to face with death, and in imagination he pictured the aspect of his newly made friend lying stark and stiff gazing up into the skies. He would have given anything in those brief minutes to have seen him come back, not to act as a shield from the firing too soon to begin, but so as to have his companionship; for, near though the others were, the little bastion seemed to be horribly lonely, and the silence about the great warehouse too oppressive to bear.
But as the boy—for he was a mere boy after all—stood at the opening with his hand grasping the barrel of the rifle whose butt rested between his feet, and gazing out at the glittering river, his image-forming thoughts became blurred; the figure of Blunt passed away, and another picture formed itself upon the retina of his eyes. There before him were the smoking ruins of a native village, and, so horribly distinct that he shuddered and turned cold again, there lay in all directions and attitudes the slaughtered victims of the pirates’ attack, and all so ghastly that the lad uttered a peculiar sibilant sound as he sharply drew in his breath between his teeth.
The next instant the chill of horror had been swept away with the imaginary picture—imaginary, but too often real in a country where the teeming population hold human life to be cheap as the dirt beneath their feet—and Stan, with his brows knit, was carefully cocking and uncocking his rifle to see if the mechanism worked accurately, before throwing open the breech to take out and replace the cartridge, when he closed it smartly and looked out at the coming junks, which glided nearer and nearer like fate.
They were so nearly within ken now that Stan could see that they were crowded with men, each a desperate and savage enemy.
“I wonder whether I can hit the first one who takes aim at me. I must or he’ll hit me,” muttered the lad. “But I shall have to be quick or he may hit me first.”
He had hardly dwelt a moment upon this thought before he heard Blunt’s voice in the long, narrow opening between the tea-chest wall and the buildings proper of house, offices, and stores, where the soft, shuffling sounds of feet could be plainly heard—sounds which Stan, who had been long enough in China to recognise them, knew to be caused by the collecting of the coolies.