Dead silence below. They had come in some doubt, but their doubts were solved now, and there was no longer need for curbed tongues, though, indeed, his hollow voice made some of them wonder if it was not a spirit that spoke to them.
"It's him!" "The man himself!" "We have him!" "In now and get him!"—was the burden of their growls, as they hung on their oars.
"See here, men!" said Gard, invisible even to Sark eyes, against the solid darkness of the slope. "There has been trouble and loss enough over this matter already, and none of it my making. Do you hear? I say again—none of it my making. If you attempt to come ashore there will be more trouble, and this time it will be of my making. Keep back!"—as an impulsive one gave a tug at his oar. "If you force me to fire, your blood be on your own heads. I give you fair warning."
Growls from the boat carried up to him an impression of mixed doubt and discomfort—ultimate disbelief in his possession of arms, an energetic oath or two, and another creak of the oar.
"Very well! Here's to show you I am armed." The report of his gun made Nance jump, at the other side of the island, and set all the birds on L'Etat—except the puffins, deep in their holes—circling and screaming.
The small shot tore up the water within a couple of yards of the boat, which backed off hastily—much to his satisfaction, for he had feared they might rush him before he had time to reload.
He had dropped flat after firing and recharged his gun as he lay. He was sure they must have come armed, and feared a volley as soon as his own discharge indicated his whereabouts.
As a matter of fact, they had come divided as to the truth of the report that there was a man on L'Etat—even then as to him being the man they sought. In any case, they had expected to take him unawares, and never dreamt of his being armed and on the watch for them.
Thanks to Nance, he had turned the tables on them. It was they who were taken unawares.
But if he spoke again, he said to himself, they would be ready for him, and their answers would probably take the rude form of bullets. So he lay still and waited.