"Rhoda Polly has shot the gunner—now is your time!"
But still the embankment for the four-inch did not quite please Dennis. He preferred to take his chance and wait. It seemed a long, weariful time. Rhoda Polly peered into the blackness along the tube of No. 27. Rhoda Polly wriggled and settled herself.
"Bang!" said No. 27. "Winged him! But he made off!" said the marksman disgustedly. "He was quarrying under the other fellow for the shell, so they can't have many or he would have brought out a fresh one. I do wish father would hurry up. In a minute or two there will be such a beautiful chance—just before they are going to fire. They will send three or four men this next time so that I can't shoot them all. If our folk are not speedy, down will come this old clock-tower!"
Rhoda Polly was a good prophet, and when next she spoke she had to report that there was a little cloud of men on either side, hiding behind the wall and preparing to load the piece, when their comrades were ready, at any hazard.
The four-inch was now poking a lean snout out of the door which had been smashed open by the mortar, and stretched along, laying her on the centre of the darkness, was Jack Jaikes, cursing the Providence which had not given him eyes like Rhoda Polly's.
"Now," said my mentor hastily, "tell them now is the time. They can't miss if they fire into the brown! Right in the centre of the gap in the line of that white chimney."
The discharge of the big gun beneath us quite made us gasp. It shook Rhoda Polly's aim, and this time No. 27 went off pretty much at random. But what we saw within the gap opposite made up for everything. The shell burst under the mortar or perhaps within it—I could not distinguish which. At any rate, something black and huge rose in the air, poised as if for flight, and then, turning over, fell with a clangorous reverberation into the house behind, smashing down the white chimney and causing the blue-coated National Guards with which it was filled to swarm out. Some took to their heels and were no more heard of in the history of the revolt of Aramon. Others pulled off their coats and fought it through in their shirts.
Dennis Deventer waved his hat, and all except Jack Jaikes yelled. He was busy getting the gun ready for a second discharge. But Dennis stopped him.
"Jackie, my lad," he said, "no more from this good lady the day—get up the mitrailleuses. They had only that one big fellow and you have tumbled him in scrap through the house behind. I don't know how you sighted as you did."
"I did not," said Jack Jaikes grumpily—"only where Rhoda Polly told me."