But the “final tussle” was not to be just yet. Spottie and Puggles, terrified into momentary daring by the imminence of their own danger, now threw themselves into the fray with an energy-which, if it did little execution, at least served to divert many a blow from their masters. No mean help that—to take the blows meant for another.
Nor were the masters themselves slow to recognise and profit by this fact. Right and left they slashed, dealing terrific swinging blows when, they could get them in, lunging desperately at the sinewy, half-naked forms about them when they could not, until British pluck and British muscle told, as they ever must in a righteous struggle for life and liberty, and One-to-twenty found itself clear of the mêlée, with a ghastly ridge of wounded at its feet, and fighting room behind.
Well they had it! For the space of one deep breath the disconcerted rabble suspended hostilities, as if unable to believe that Twenty-to-one had got the worst of it. Then their ranks closed up into a solid mass of dusky, perspiring, blood-stained forms, and the onslaught was renewed—not hurriedly now, but with a watchful determination, a guarded, fierceness, that forced One-to-twenty back foot by foot until but little room was left for fighting, and none, in sooth, for quarter when it should come, as soon it must, to the sheer wall and the bitter end.
Once more the blacks had slunk to the rear—had, in fact, already reached the wall, where, since they could get no farther, they cowered in miserable anticipation of speedy death. The “final tussle” was not far off now. Don and Jack had barely room to swing their cutlasses in. So much of the rocky ledge as might be measured by a single backward stride—only that separated them from the wall and the last scene of all. Inch by inch, their teeth hard set, their breath coming and going in quick, laboured gasps, they contested this narrow selvage of life. So the balance hung, when there came a second momentary lull in the deadly game of give and take. The dusky foe could now afford to breathe, being confident of the issue.
Keeping a wary eye upon their movements, Don seized his chum by the hand. “I never thought it would come to—to this, old fellow,” he said huskily; “God knows I didn't!”
Jack swallowed hard several times before he could trust himself to reply. “No more did I. But were not going to funk now, old fellow; and—and I'm glad it's to be together, anyhow!”
One mute, agonised look into each other's eyes; one last pressure of the hand, and again, shoulder to shoulder, they faced the foe and the inevitable end.
At this instant, when it seemed that not a ghost of a chance remained, there arose on their immediate right a shrill chattering sound—a sound that, somehow, had in it a ring of joyousness so strangely out of keeping with the situation that Don turned with a start and a sudden thrill of hope towards the quarter whence it came. As he did so, his eyes fell upon Bosin, forgotten in the heat of the fray, and now perched—good God! upon what?
Don clutched his companion's arm and pointed with unsteady finger.
“Look!”