“You are wasting your cartridges.”
“Am I, sir?”
“Yes. Wait till we get some daylight, unless you can make sure of your man.”
“All right, Mr Maine, sir. It is you, isn’t it? I was getting a bit excited-like. One moment, sir: have you seen my missus?”
“Your wife? No. Why?”
“She telled me she was coming up to help the Doctor.”
“Oh, nonsense! She ought to be with the women. I will tell her if I see her.—There, look,” whispered Archie—“to your left! There are half-a-dozen fellows at least creeping through that patch of fog.”
“They look big ’uns, too, sir,” whispered the man excitedly, as the indistinct figures were magnified by the mist. “Would it be waste of cartridges, sir, to get two in a line and let go?”
“No. Fire!”
Crock went the rifle, and the figures that had loomed up seemed to melt away. But as soon as the rifle had flashed there was the fad, fad, fad of hurried steps, something whizzed in at the window, and with a dull thud a spear stuck in the floor of the room.