“Rake them down,” the factor cried shrilly. “Beat them off if you can. Don’t let them get a footing inside!”
The words were hardly uttered when the stockade groaned and rattled. The savages had reared their rude scaling ladders against it, and by these means some gained the top, while others clambered up with the agility of cats.
It was a most desperate and daring assault, but we met it with the dogged pluck of men who fight for a last chance. We shot half a score of the devils as they clung to the top of the stockade, and speedily finished others who dropped down among us.
They poured over thicker and faster, screeching like fiends, and now we were driven back a little. We fired as long as we could load, and then made an onset with clubbed muskets. The advantage was on our side, the Indians being mostly armed with tomahawks, and though more than a score of them were inside at once, we soon sent them scrambling back, and so checked the incoming tide.
A little handful stuck out to the last, disdaining to flee. They came at us ferociously, and nearly broke through our line. I finished one, and Captain Rudstone and Baptiste killed two more. A fourth Indian—a stalwart, hideously painted savage—carried a musket. He suddenly leveled it and fired, and I heard a sharp cry behind me. I looked round in time to see Griffith Hawke stagger, clutch at the rail and fall heavily.
CHAPTER XXIV.
A BLACK NIGHT.
At the time, so exciting and dangerous was the situation, I scarcely realized what had happened. The fight was still raging, and I was in the thick of it. Leaving others to render aid to the factor, I sprang with clubbed musket at the redskin who had shot him. I struck hard and true, and I yelled hoarsely as he dropped with a shattered skull. My comrades finished several more, and now the survivors—four in number—turned and fled. One scrambled safely over the stockade; the other three were cut down as they ran.