We are still upon the rock and the shadows engulf us. The lad at my side, sick with waiting, has curled himself up upon a bed of stone and is half asleep; Seth Barker leans against a crag like some figure hewn out of granite; old Clair-de-Lune is all hunched up as a bundle. Nevertheless, masterly eyes scan the lapping waters. Will the night never speak to us? Will the day bring waiting? Ah, no! not that! A shot rings out clear on the still night air; a flash of fire leaps across the sea. We spring to our feet; we cry, "Ready!" The sixty hours are over and the end is near!
CHAPTER XXIV
THE SECOND ATTACK ON CZERNY'S HOUSE
The shot was fired and answered at the lower gate. We had looked for that; for that we had been waiting during the watching hours. They would attack the lesser reef, we said, and our own good men, standing sentinels, would flash the news of it to us, and the gun would do the rest. Dark as it was, the blackest hour the island had given us, nevertheless by daylight we had trained our barrels upon the reef, and now took aim in all confidence. Twice we whistled shrilly to warn our men; twice we heard their answering voices. Then the gun belched forth its hail of shot and the challenge was thrown down.
"Give it to them, Dolly!" I cried, my brain afire at the call of action; "for every honest seaman's sake, give it to them, lad! We'll tell of this to-morrow—aye, Dolly, we'll tell a great story yet!"
He answered me with a boy's glad cry; I do believe it was like a game to him.
"Pass here, pass here!" he kept crying; "we have them every time! In with the shot, Seth—in with it! Don't keep them waiting! Oh, captain, what a night!"
The others said nothing; even Peter Bligh's tongue was still in that surpassing moment. The doubt of it defied words. We knew nothing, nor could we do aught but leave our fortune to the darkness of the night. The rogues who fell, the rogues who stood, the boats that came on, the boats that withdrew, of these we were ignorant. All was hidden from our eyes; the veil of the night cloaked from us the work we had done. If men cried in agony, if groans mocked angry boasts, if we heard the splashing of the oars, the hoarse command, the vile blasphemy, the rest was in imagination's keeping. The outposts of Czerny's crew, we said, had tried to rush the gate where our own men watched; but our own were behind the steel doors now and the gun's hail swept the barren rock. The dawn would show us the harvest we had reaped.
Now, the volleys rolled their thunder right away to the hills of Ken's Island, and the whistling of the bullets was like the singing of unseen birds above our heads; there were oases of red flame in the waste of blackness; we heard oaths and cries, commands roared hoarsely across the water, voices triumphant and voices that were stilled; and then came the first great silence. Whatever had befallen on the rock, those who sought to force the lesser gate were, for the moment, driven back. Even little Dolly, mad at the gun like one whom no reason could restrain, heard me at last and obeyed my command.