At the back of the house, however, on which a party of Indians were engaged in endeavouring to also force their way in, there was no porch, nor was there any to the sides of the building; and it was from these that we had heard the screams as the contents of Buck's great barrels had reached them.
It took, however, but little time for the water to become exhausted, and then we knew that the conflict must resolve itself into a hand-to-hand one. We might keep the savages at bay for some time, it was true, so long as they could enter the house by one door only, but how long, we had to ask ourselves, could such as that be the case? In a short time one of the windows of the saloon must go, or one of the great doors, of which there were two, or one of the side doors; and then the Indians would pour through the opening thus made and the massacre begin. Even with those men under O'Rourke and Buck we were not twenty-five strong, the cowardly negroes who were left being, as I have said, all huddled together in the vaults and cellars below, where they had locked themselves in--so that, since there must be two or three hundred Indians outside at least, the resistance could not continue long.
Alas! as it was, our front window giving on to the porch already showed signs of yielding to the attack from without, though now there was a fresh barricade offered to the incoming foe by a heap of their own slain who lay outside and also partly within the room. Already, my lord had shot several on the outside, taking deadly aim as their hideous faces appeared at the orifice, but the breach had widened so that two or three had crawled into the room to be, however, despatched at once by him or Mr. Kinchella.
And now, since, of all else, this window showed to those outside that it would yield more easily than any other spot, the attack was entirely directed towards it; the Indians were thundering against what remained of the iron-bound shutters with rams made of small trees that they had uprooted, as well as cutting away the lighter woodwork with their weapons.
"Another half hour more," said my lord, "will see the end. God He knows what it will be. Yet, dearest, since it is to come I am happy that I shall die in your sweet company. But, oh! Joice, Joice, if we might have lived how happy our future would have been."
"Must we die?" I wailed, woman-like, "must we die? And now when our love has not been told more than a few hours. Oh! Gerald."
"We can hope," he said, "but that is all. And, sweetheart, best it is to look things straight in the face." Then, even as he spoke, he fired again at a horrid savage who had half forced his body through the aperture--getting larger every moment--and added one more to the list of slain.
Now all the others were called for to come into the saloon and help in the resistance there, where the attack was principally directed; which call they instantly answered abandoning their previous posts. And, bad man as I at last knew O'Rourke to have been, I could not but respect him for what he had done on my behalf this night, nor could I but mourn for his evident sufferings. His bandaged arm, being helpless, hung by his side, his close cropped iron-grey hair was matted with blood from a wound in his head, and his face which had once been so purple was now as white as marble from his loss of blood.
"Oh! sir," I exclaimed, as I tried to still my shaking limbs as best I might, while I raised my head from Mary's breast on which it had been lying, she comforting me like an elder sister with soft words, "oh! sir, my heart bleeds for you. You have been indeed a true hero to-night in my cause, and I thank you."
"Madam," he said, speaking faintly, "I came here to do my best for you because--because--well--well, because you and this other lady received me as a gentleman; treatment that I have not been much accustomed to since I was a boy; though I was one once. No matter. The end is at hand, I imagine--ah! well hit, my lord, well hit, but it will avail us nothing now--I am glad that Patrick O'Rourke is making a good one."