“That’s right; and the crews of the other junks are at the same game.”
Chapter Twenty Nine.
“One Cartridge Left.”
There was no doubt about the matter, for as they were speaking a tiny curl of smoke began to rise from the middle of the group of busy men on the nearest junk, and Stan’s voice rose, sounding hoarse and deep:
“Begin firing again, slow and careful shots, at the men carrying the matches. Stop; I’ll begin.”
He took aim across the bale of silk behind which he was kneeling, and—though he did not see it, others did plainly—the linstock flew up, jerked from the holder’s hand, described a curve, and fell overboard to be extinguished.
There was a yell at this, and half-a-dozen men or so began discharging their matchlocks at the window from which the accurate shot had come; while directly after there was a roar from another junk, whose men had charged their brass gun unseen, and the contents went crashing and spattering about the opening, making a great uproar, but doing very little harm.
It was a disillusionment for the defenders which roused them to a feeling of bitterness and nerved every one present with determination, and the duel between the junks and the hong went on fiercely, but with no serious harm to the defenders. The attacking party, however, suffered terribly, man after man of the crews, if they can be so called, of the guns falling killed or wounded from the slow, steady, accurate fire which picked off with almost unerring precision those who loaded and those who fired the junks’ artillery, till the pirates yelled with rage and fury, crowding over one another to take the disabled men’s places.