While the party who had landed, quite seventy strong, were raging and tearing round the building, battering at door and barricaded window, and every now and then making a vain thrust with their spears at the firing party quite beyond their reach at the upper windows, and frequently getting a bullet in return which laid a desperate aggressor low, some of the more cautious sheltered themselves on the outside of the wall of bales and chests to begin firing up at the defenders. But with no advantage to themselves, for while crouching down behind the wall they could only bring their heavy, clumsy matchlocks to bear at such an angle that the charge went up high above the defenders’ heads. And whenever a man who had grown furious from several disappointments rose up to get a better aim, he went down to a certainty, riddled by a bullet sent home by one or other of the watchful clerks.
And all the while effort after effort was made by the leaders of the pirates to bring the swivel-guns of their junks to bear, but without avail; for, with a strong desire to emulate the success of Stan’s shots, quite half-a-dozen of the clerks and warehousemen who commanded the dangerous spots waited patiently and watchfully with presented piece and finger on trigger for the opportunities that were not long in coming. Man after man of those working the guns was shot down, till, in spite of yells and blows from their leaders, not a single pirate could be induced to carry out the dangerous task of loading, laying, or firing the heavy swivel-guns.
Chapter Twenty Eight.
“Fiery Missiles.”
The desperate fight had been going on for quite an hour from the time of the landing of the attacking party, and the men who had gained an entrance into the first defence had grown exhausted by the vain efforts they had made to break a way through, and contented themselves, such as could, with getting back outside to the shelter of the walls and, crouched there, watching their companions’ fire, while turning a deaf ear, and then sullen looks, towards their leaders on the junks, who kept on furiously yelling to them to go on.
They did not seem inclined to risk it, but scowled at those who ordered the attack, and waited. After a short consultation among the junk captains—a consultation carried on by shouts and yells from vessel to vessel, delivered through hands held trumpet fashion to the lips—it became evident to Stan and his little garrison that an attack was to be made upon a larger scale. For the crews of the junks manned the sweeps, and while those close in strove to lay their craft alongside the wharf above and below the spot where their three junks were grappled together, the other two began to creep up inshore as if to land their men where they could get right round to the back of the great hong and the outbuildings; while, to add to the peril, one of the men on the far side of the roof-ridge—a point of vantage from which several successful shots had been sent into the vessels—shouted the bad news that the first junk, which had been carried down the river till she had disappeared round a bend, was coming up again full sail, evidently to rejoin the others.
“It looks very bad now, Mr Lynn,” said Lawrence, the foreman, who had distinguished himself by the way in which he had maintained his coolness. “They’re going to make a grand attack now in force.”
“Yes,” replied Stan quietly, “it does look very bad. They’re too many for us.”