"Help you, captain! Aye," roared he, "if it was the ould divil himself in a travelling caravan, I'd help you!"
He swung his rifle by the barrel as he spoke the words and, bringing it down crash, he cleaved the skull of a great ruffian whose face was already glowering down from the turret's rim. Nothing, I swear, in all that night was more wonderful than the sang-froid of this great Irishman (as he would call himself in fighting moods) or the merry words which he could find for us even then in the very crisis of it, when hope seemed gone and the worst upon us. For Peter knew well what I was about when I leapt from the turret and charged down upon the mutineers. A dozen men, perchance, had gained foothold on the rock. We must drive them back, he said, stand face to face with them, let the odds be what they might.
"God strengthen my arm this hour and show me the bald places!" cries he, leaping to the ground and whirling his musket like a demon. Seth Barker, do not doubt, was on his heels—trust the carpenter to be where danger was! I could hear him grunting even above that awful din. He fought like ten, and wherever he swung his musket there he left death behind him.
So follow us as we leap from the turret, and hurl ourselves upon that astonished crew. Black as the place was, tremulous the light, nevertheless the cabined space, the open plateau, was our salvation. I saw figures before me; faces seemed to look into my own; and as a battle-axe of old time, so my rifle's butt would fall upon them. Heaven knows I had the strength of three and I used it with three's agility, now shooting them down, now hitting wildly, thrust here, thrust there, bullets singing about my ears, haunting cries everywhere. Aye, how they went under! What music it was, those crashing blows upon head and breast, the loud report, the gurgling death-rattle, the body thrown into the sea, the pitiful screams for mercy! And yet the greater wonder, perhaps, that we lived to tell of it. Twelve against three; yet a craven twelve, remember, who feared to die and yet must fight to live! And to nerve our arms a woman's honour, and to guide us aright, the watchword: "Home!"
I fought my way to the water's edge, and then turned round to see what the others were doing. There were two upon Peter Bligh at that moment, but one fell headlong as I took a step towards them; and the other's driving-knife fell on empty air, and the man himself, struck full between the eyes, rolled dead into the lapping sea.
"Well done, Peter, well done!" I cried, wildly; and then, as though it were an answer to my boasts, something fell upon my shoulder like a great weight dropped from above, and I went down headlong upon the rock. Turning as I fell, I clutched a human throat, and, closing my fingers upon it, he and I, the man out of the darkness and the fool who had forgotten his eyes, went reeling over and over like wild beasts that seek a hold and would tear and bite when the moment comes. Aye, how I held him, how near his eyes seemed to mine, what gasping sounds he uttered, how his feet fought for foothold on the rock, how his hand felt for the knife at his girdle! And I had him always, had him surely; and seeking to force himself upward, the slippery rock gave him no foothold, and he slipped at last from my very fingers, and some great fish, hidden from me, drew him down to the water and I saw the waves close above his mouth. Henceforth there were but three men left at the gate of Czerny's house. They were three who, even at that time, could thank God because the peril was turned.
* * *
We beat the twelve off, as I have told you, and for an hour at least no fresh attack was made on the rock. The sharpest eye now could not detect boats in the darkness; the sharpest ear could not distinguish the muffled splash of oars. We lay all together in the turret, and very methodically, as seamen will, we stanched our wounds and asked, "What next?" That we had some hurt of such an affray goes without saying. My own shoulder was bruised and aching; the blood still trickled down Peter Bligh's honest face from the knife-wound that had gashed his forehead; Seth Barker pressed his hand to a jagged side and said that it was nothing. But for these scratches we cared little, and when our comrades hailed us from the lesser gate, their "All's well!" made us glad men indeed. In spite of it all, one of us, at least, I witness, could tell himself, "It is possible—by Heaven, it is possible—that we shall see the day!" That we had beaten off the first attack was not to be doubted. Wherever the mutineers had gone to, they no longer rowed in the loom of the gate. And yet I knew that the time must be short; day would not serve them nor the morning light. The dark must decide it.
"They will come again, Peter, and it will be before the dawn," said I, when one thing and another had been mentioned and no word of their misfortune. "It's beyond expectation to suppose anything else. If this house is to be taken, they must take it in the dark. And more than that, lads," said I, "it was a foolish thing for us to go among them as we did and to fight it out down yonder. We are safer in the turret— safer, by a long way!"
"I thought so all the time, sir," answered Dolly Venn, wisely. "They can never get below if you cover the door; and I can keep the sea. It's lucky Czerny loopholed this place, anyway. If ever I meet him I shall quote poetry: 'He nursed the pinion which impelled the steel.' It would about make him mad, captain!"