Whiz came the long arrows, to shiver and splinter on the walls of rock; and with the flash of the arquebuses came their leaden bullets, to crash and flatten on the same place; and then both the English and Spaniards withdrew behind some masses of the fallen walls and the trunks of trees, to consider the best means of assailing those hidden defenders, of whose number and power they were ignorant.
"There are twenty charges of powder in the bandoleer," said Claude Hamilton, counting them in the dark, "and there are not above twenty of those cut-throats opposed to us. Your eye is keener, Fawside, and your hand more sure, than mine; take the arquebuse, and pick me off these fellows as fast as they show themselves. Two men to man this cavern-mouth are as good as a hundred; let us fight bravely, lad, for we know not but aid may come anon."
By the glitter of its beams on the polished armour of Gamboa's men, the bright moon showed with fatal distinctness where they nestled among the green hawthorns or behind the heaps of stones which had fallen from the old castle above; thus Florence, when he loaded and levelled by the silvery light without, felt that Madeline's safety, honour, her life perhaps, depended upon the precision of his aim.
He almost trembled as he selected an object; and Claude Hamilton could perceive that his face was pale, even in the usually ruddy light of the match, in which his polished mail seemed to glitter with a lambent glow, as his eye glared along the barrel. He fired; and the explosion, which made the cavern echo with seeming thunder, was followed by a cry of agony, and then an armed man was seen rolling down the slope towards the Esk.
"To thine arquebuse again, lad!" said Hamilton, sternly but cheerily, and with grim satisfaction; "thou hast given one of these tawny loons a shot in his stomach, and a weighty one, too; I warrant they go four, at least, to the Lanark pound. Couldst notch the helmet of that pernicious heretic Pedro Gamboa, think you? By St. Andrew! were he within reach of my hand I could spelder him by one stroke of my axe, yea, spelder him as I would a haddock!" he added, as another volley of shot and arrows whizzed and rattled on the rocks around them.
A second bullet from the arquebuse of Florence, followed by the cry of—
"Holy Virgin, I am a dead man!" announced that this time an English billman had fallen; and with a yell of rage his comrades rushed forward to storm the retreat of these hidden enemies. While Florence reloaded and blew the match of his arquebuse, Claude Hamilton with his two-handed sword manned the cavern mouth, and being on firm vantage ground (while the assailants required all their hands. feet, and energy, to clamber upward), he cut down three of them in succession with ease, and by a single thrust tossed a fourth nearly ten yards into the woody hollow below. In a minute more two others hac fallen, killed or wounded, under the deadly aim of Florence.
"How stands your bandoleer?" asked the laird of Preston, resting on his long sword.
"I have shots enough for them all at this rate."
"Good—by the black rood of Scotland, good! We'll beat them yet; level low and true—we fight for our lives!"