Then John Howell's voice bawls out, "I know you, Drogue; and so help me God, I shall cut your throat before this business ends!—you dirty renegade and traitor to your King!"
Such a rage possessed me that I scarce knew what I was about, and I ran across the grass to the bolted door of the house, and fell to slashing at it with my hatchet like a madman.
They were firing now so rapidly that the smoke of their guns made a choking fog about the house; but the log cabin had no overhang, not being built for defense, and so they over-shot me whilst my hatchet battered splinters from the door and shook it almost from its hinges.
Some one was coughing in the thick, rifle-fog near me, and presently I heard Nick swearing and hammering at the door with his gun butt.
The French trappers, not so rash as we, lay close in the darkness, shooting steadily into the shutters at short range.
Shutters and door, though splintering, held; the defenders fired at my men's rifle-flashes, or strove to shoot at Nick and me, where we crouched low in the sheltered doorway; but they could not sufficiently depress the muzzles of their guns to hit us.
Suddenly, from out of the night, came a fire-arrow, whistling, with dry moss all aflame, and lodged on the roof of Howell's house.
Quoth Nick: "Your Tree-eater is in action, John. God send that the fire catch!"
From the darkness, Silver called out to me that the marsh-hay had nearly burned out, and what were he and Joe to do? Then came a-whizzing another fire-arrow, and another, but whether the dew was too heavy on the roof or the moss too damp, I do not know; only that when at length the roof caught fire, it was but a tiny blaze and flickered feebly, eating a slow way along the edges of the eaves.
Nick, who had been wrenching at the imbedded door stone, finally freed and lifted it, and hurled it at the bolted shutters. In they crashed. Then the door, too, burst open, and Tom Dawling rushed upon me with his rifle clubbed high above me.