“Çà toi!” Jules slashed powerfully at one of them, and felt his axe bite deep; the handle was nearly wrenched from his grasp as the man fell, his head split to the chin, and the hot red flow ran down the wooden handle and covered Verbaux’s hand. “Bon!” he said to himself, and watched for more.
“Crang! crash! bang! whi-i-i-i-ng! crack! pang-pang-pang!” sounded the guns without and within.
“I’m hit, lads!” the factor called, and tumbled to the bloody ground.
Jules and Gregoire ran to him. The heart’s flow ebbed in spurts from his chest.
“Keep it up, me lads; gie it to ’em! Don’t gie up, Verbaux. I trust the post to ye, lad. Good-b—” The brave man’s voice died away in a deep sigh and he lay still.
In the midst of the turmoil, with death passing them close each instant, the two pulled off their caps and muttered a prayer.
“Come, den,” Gregoire said, “la mort for touts!”
Everywhere men slashed and hacked wildly; loaded and fired with blood fury, gnashing their teeth and howling in frenzy. A big dog ran round and round in a circle, biting at a wound in his side and foaming at the mouth; in his pain-blindness he fell against Gregoire; the latter with one quick stroke of his axe severed the suffering beast’s head, picked it up and hurled it at the figures that tried desperately to scale the stockade. Then firebrands began dropping fast among and on the buildings; here and there spouts of red showed that they had caught. Verbaux put them out; he climbed on the highest shed and stood there with bullets moaning through the air, seeking him, but he was not afraid, and stamped out another blaze. He could see over the walls, and counted many men in the attacking party; several lay on the snow, some rolling and twisting, others motionless. Still the wind would not come, and the sullen powder fumes hung like gray shrouds over everything, the fighting, cursing forms rushing back and forth through them like phantoms. Fifteen bodies lay inert in the yard, trampled on by the defenders; there was no time or chance to carry them away.
A bullet breathed against Jules’s face, then another and another passed close to his head. He looked at the trees across the clearing; jets of thick blue smoke came from the green masses, opened out, then floated upward grudgingly.
“En bas! En bas!” shrieked Gregoire at him from below, and he leaped down into the thick of the defence.