And after Dave had floated the sailor’s cool, resolute:
“Aye, aye, sir.”
[CHAPTER XII—RISKING ALL ON ONE THROW]
Just before Dave gained the parapet some of his sturdiest Jackies, by seizing a score of the yellow scoundrels and hurling them bodily over the wall on the heads of their countrymen below, had succeeded in clearing some elbow room in which to fight.
The machine gun at this point had ceased sputtering, for its server had been forced back in the rush.
Dave’s sword flew in straight up and down cuts as he hurled himself among the furies who fought to drive him back. Thrice he parried spear thrusts that otherwise would have spitted him.
Rallying around him the strongest of his fighting men, Ensign Darrin drove the yellow men back for an instant.
“Tune up the machine gun,” Dave bellowed. “We must rake this multitude again if we would have a single chance to win.”
By signs, since he could not make himself heard many yards away, Darrin passed the word down the line for sailors and marines to fill the magazines of their rifles and fire into the Chinese, who were making an effort to raise new ladders against the wall.
But Ensign Dave glancing along his thin, exhausted line to see if many of them were hurt, muttered to himself: