“Now separate them, lads.”
The bluejackets dashed into the crowd with a cheer, and good-humouredly flung themselves between miners and redskins, employing fists, shoulders, and, where necessary and practicable, the hilts or flats of their cutlasses. By the time Campbell came running up with his eight men, the wonder-stricken Indians had drawn back, and were meditating on the apparent illogicalness of their Queen’s warriors.
“Serve this lot the same as the others,” said Mayne; and those of the miners who had not fled were soon holding up their hands, while the grinning sailors crammed their haversacks with pistols and bowie-knives, or stacked rifles and pickaxes out of harm’s way.
The Indian guides now asked for their weapons and were curtly refused by Mayne, who, intimating to the miners that they were now under arrest, made them fall in, preparatory to a return to their own camp, which was but a few hundred yards away. While the indefatigable doctor was singling out the more sober and respectable of these to help him in an examination of the wounded of both parties, a German digger who had fled came running back to the camp, hysterical with fright.
“The Chippewyans!” he screamed, clutching at Campbell’s arm, and sobbing convulsively.
There was no need to ask what he meant, for the thunder of horses’ hoofs could already be heard, and, by the time the sailors were brought to attention, the wild war-whoop of a body of Indians was resounding over the slopes.
“Our pistols. Give us our arms,” roared the terrified miners; and again the lieutenant found himself in an uncomfortable predicament. Only a minute before, he had been considering the advisability of disarming the redskins in case of a treacherous attack during the night. The new arrivals were mounted, and doubtless strong in numbers; and, backed by the forty or more Indians already present, they might easily be a more powerful force than he could deal with. Already the savages, seeing vengeance for their burning stacks within their grasp, had gathered together and were chattering and waving their war-hatchets.
“I can’t trust you with pistols,” he said coldly, and beckoned to him the most reliable of the Indian guides. “You must tell your people who are coming that the White Queen’s judges will punish these men. If they attempt to do it themselves, they also will be punished.”