So this was the end of the matter! Spurrier reloaded his rifle and went down the ladder. Hastily he carried Glory into the room at the back and overturned his heavy table to serve as a final barricade. He elected to die here when they swarmed the door from which he could no longer keep them, crowning the battle with a finale of punishment as they crowded through the breach.
But the minutes dragged with irksome tension. He was keyed up now, wire-tight, for the finish, and yet silence fell again and denied him the relief of action. To Spurrier it was like a long and cruel delay imposed upon a man standing blindfolded and noosed on the scaffold trap. Then the quiet was ripped with a totally wasteful fusillade, as though every attacker outside were pumping his gun in a contest of speed rather than effect.
Spurrier smiled grimly. Let them burn their powder—he would have his till they massed in front of his muzzle and the barrier fell.
“When the barrier fell!” Crouched there behind the table where he meant to sell his life in that brief space that seemed long, the words brought with them the memory of one of the few poems that had ever meant much to him—and while he awaited death his mind seized upon the lines—a funeral address in soliloquy!
“For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall——”
He strained his ears to his listening and then through his head ran other verses:
“I was ever a fighter, so—one fight more,
The best and the last!