The muskets cracked and a louder yell arose from without.
"Two," said the master composedly, receiving a fresh musket from his daughter's hand.
"They will try to dash in the door, your Honor!" cried the overseer from his post of observation. "They have the trunk of a pine with them."
"Let them come," said his master grimly. "They will find a warm welcome."
A double line of savages raised the great trunk from the ground and advanced with it at a run, yelling as they came. They had reached the steps leading up into the porch when from the loopholed door and window within there poured a deadly fire. Three fell, but the battering-ram came on and struck against the door with tremendous force. The door held, and but twelve of the twenty who had entered the porch returned to their fellows.
"They won't try that again," said the master with a short laugh.
"They are dividing," cried the overseer. "They will surround the house. Every man to his post!"
Around the corner of the house to the moonlit sward beneath the great room windows swept a tide of Indians and negroes with Luiz Sebastian and the two Ricahecrian brothers at their head. A few of the Indians had guns; the slaves were armed with axes, scythes, knives—the plunder of the tool house—or with jagged pieces of old iron, or with oars taken from the boats and broken into dreadful clubs. They came on with a din that was terrific, the savages from the eastern hemisphere howling like the beasts within their native forests, those from the western uttering at intervals their sterner, more appalling cry.
Within the great room Sir Charles, languidly graceful as ever, stood beside the small square opening in the door that led down into the garden, and fired again and again into the mob without. He fought with an air as became the fine gentleman of the period, but underneath the elaborate carelessness of demeanor was a cool precision of action. The hand that so nonchalantly brushed away the grains of powder from his white ruffles, was steady enough at the trigger; the eye that turned from the red death without to cast languishing glances at his mistress where she stood directing the women, was quick to note the minutest change in savage tactics. He jested as he fought—once he drew a tremulous wail of laughter from Mistress Lettice's lips.
A bullet sung through the aperture and grazed his arm. "The first blood," he said, with a laugh.