For a moment the only response to his challenge was silence. Then a voice rang out which he had heard before, arrogant and commanding:
“As God has ordained that I and none other should rule the earth, with Him alone, I shall. By my Imperial order, and with His assistance, bring that man to me, dead or alive!”
A brief pause ensued. Edestone could hear the officers urging on their men. Suddenly pistol-shots rang out, and with a mad rush they came on. The door swayed and shivered under the impact. It split and shattered. Finally it fell.
“May God have mercy on his soul!” murmured Edestone, and he tossed his hat high in the air.
“Specs” from his look-out caught the signal; and instantly the doorway became a writhing, shrieking mass of wounded humanity. Like vaseline squeezed out of a tube, it was forced out of the opening by the pressure of those behind and spread in wider and wider circles across the roof, until the aperture itself was choked and stopped with bodies.
But Edestone and his companions were spared the full measure of this sickening sight, as the rapid manoeuvres of the Little Peace Maker compelled them to devote their attention to her.
As the great ship descended to within about ten feet of the chimney-tops, men appeared on her lower bridge and dropped over the insulated ladder which extended almost to where the refugees lay.
Picking James up and putting him on his back where he clung like a baby, Edestone ran for the ladder, quickly followed by Lawrence and Black. He reached the bridge just in time to turn James over to one of the crew, and extend his assistance to Lawrence, who had received a shot in one hand, and was rather dizzily holding on to the ladder with the other. Eventually, though, they all gained the bridge, and with their rescuers already there raced up the gangway under a perfect hail of bullets for the open doorway at the top. But before the last man had passed through, two of the sailors had been shot, and had fallen to their death on the roof.
As they entered the ship, they were met by “Specs,” Captain Lee, Dr. Brown, and other officers in uniforms which at the first glance might have been taken for those of the New York Yacht Club, except for the insignia on their caps which was a combination of Edestone’s private signal and the letters L. P. M. Edestone, however, interrupted their attempt to salute him.
“Please waive all ceremony,” he said. “We have wounded men here that must be attended to.”