“That can be provided against. We have plenty of tarry wood here, and we can cut down the still standing brush, and making two huge bonfires, deluge the whole with kerosene when we hear the beggars coming and near at hand. Thus shall you have light to fight.”
“McGregor, my lad, I think you have saved the fort and our lives. Get ready your men and proceed to duty. Or, stay. While they still are at their terrible feast and dancing round the fires, you may remain inside.”
“Thanks, sir, thanks.”
The men had supper at eleven o’clock and a modicum of rum each. The British sailor needs no Dutch courage on the day of battle.
The distant fires burnt on till midnight. Then, by means of his night-glass, Dickson could see the tall chieftain was mustering his men for the charge.
Half an hour later they came on with fiendish shouts and howling. Then brave McGregor and his men left the barracks and hid in the darkling to the left and low down on the sands.
The enemy advanced from the right. Their chief was evidently a poor soldier, or he would have caused them to steal as silently as panthers upon the fort. When within a hundred yards, Dickson at one side and Reginald at the other, each accompanied by a man carrying a keg of kerosene, issued forth at the back door.
In three minutes more the flames sprang up as if by magic. They leaped in great white tongues of fire up the rock sides, from which the rays were reflected, so that all round the camp was as bright as day.
The astonished savages, however, came on like a whirlwind, till within twenty yards of the brae on which stood the fort. Then Mr Hall, the brave and imperturbable Yankee, “gave them fits,” as he termed it. He trained a gun on them and fired it point-blank. The yells and awful howlings of rage and pain told how well the grape had done its deadly work, and that many had fallen never to rise again.