In another moment steps were heard on the verandah. The growling dogs, still deeply distrustful, remained in the yard. A hand tried the back-door; it yielded, but this apparently excited no suspicion. It is not the custom to lock up houses in the bush of Australia. Burglars are unknown, and bushrangers prefer to transact their business chiefly in broad daylight—about the hour of 11 A.M. This was held to be an exceptional case.
'The storekeeper sleeps off the big room,' said some one cautiously. 'I saw him there when I was buying tobacco.'
'That's Billy's voice,' whispered Gray. 'I'd know it amongst a thousand.'
'Let's go in anyhow,' a rougher voice answered. 'There's not a dashed soul awake. Light a match and we'll have him out.'
A match flashed, lighting up the dim room, but with a result wholly unexpected by the chief actors in the melodrama. As they looked carelessly round the silent room they could hardly restrain a start of surprise as their roving eyes fell upon the sergeant in full uniform, the armed men, the levelled weapons. At the same moment Mr. Gateward arose from behind his bale, and lighting a tallow lamp, retired discreetly.
But in far less time than is occupied in tracing these ephemeral lines, thought had matured and action followed. Outmanœuvred, outnumbered as they were, the cool courage of the race was as manifest in these unhappy outlaws as in the best men of Britain's warlike forces.
'Surrender in the Queen's name!' roared the sergeant. 'It's no use, Billy; better give in quietly.'
'Not alive you don't get us,' answered the younger man, with the soft, deliberate intonation of the native-born Australian, while he raised his revolver.
The other, a grizzled, broad-shouldered ruffian, shorter than his companion by several inches, forbore reply, but firing at the sergeant's first word, shot Bertram Devereux through the body, sending also a second bullet into Harold Atherstone's right arm without loss of time. As he did so, Atherstone shifted his revolver to his left hand and fired deliberately. The robber sprang and fell on his face.
At that moment it seemed as if every firearm in the room was discharged simultaneously—the sergeant's rifle, Gray's and Mossthorne's revolvers. When the smoke cleared, Mossthorne lay dead with a rifle bullet through his heart and with a smaller bullet through his shoulder. Bertram Devereux, bleeding profusely, was lying insensible.