“Get hold on him, some of you,” came to my singing ears in a fierce growl, as the struggle went on. “Quick! D’yer hear? We shall have ’em all at us directly. Now then. Quick! You will have it, then.”
There was a dull thud and then a groan, followed by a couple of shots outside, one following the other; shots which even then, half dead as I was, gave me a sensation of relief, for I knew they had been fired by the first sentry and the next to spread the alarm.
Almost at the same moment, I felt a warm gush of something flooding my face and neck, and with a moan a man fell back across me, as I lay listening to the rush of feet. Then came loudly, “Now for it, lads!”
There was another rush, and, sounding distant and strange now, as I lay half suffocated, I heard a fierce yelling, and above it in commanding tones,
“Halt! Surrender!”
But the rushing and yelling continued; there was the sound of blows, and then twice I heard loudly the order “Fire!” followed by a rattling volley; shrieks and groans; the scuffling rush of bare feet, and the clink of irons; and it seemed to me, that the convicts were running back to their hammocks.
Then all seemed to be blank till I was awakened by the glare of lanterns in my eyes, and someone said,
“Here’s Arthur Rowan, sir.”
“Dead?” said a voice, which I knew to be that of one of the officers.
I answered the question myself in a husky voice, with the word seeming to tear its way out of my throat.