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Page 16
"For, I understand it well," says she, cheerfully, without a shake
in her voice.
"I am a soldier's daughter and a sailor's sister, and I understand
it too," says Miss Maryon, just in the same way.
Steady and busy behind where I stood, those two beautiful and
delicate young women fell to handling the guns, hammering the
flints, looking to the locks, and quietly directing others to pass
up powder and bullets from hand to hand, as unflinching as the best
of tried soldiers.
Sergeant Drooce had brought in word that the pirates were very
strong in numbers--over a hundred was his estimate--and that they
were not, even then, all landed; for, he had seen them in a very
good position on the further side of the Signal Hill, evidently
waiting for the rest of their men to come up. In the present pause,
the first we had had since the alarm, he was telling this over again
to Mr. Macey, when Mr. Macey suddenly cried our: "The signal!
Nobody has thought of the signal!"
We knew of no signal, so we could not have thought of it.
"What signal may you mean, sir?" says Sergeant Drooce, looking sharp
at him.
"There is a pile of wood upon the Signal Hill. If it could be
lighted--which never has been done yet--it would be a signal of
distress to the mainland."
Charker cries, directly: "Sergeant Drooce, dispatch me on that
duty. Give me the two men who were on guard with me to-night, and
I'll light the fire, if it can be done."
"And if it can't, Corporal--" Mr. Macey strikes in.
"Look at these ladies and children, sir!" says Charker. "I'd sooner
light myself, than not try any chance to save them."
We gave him a Hurrah!--it burst from us, come of it what might--and
he got his two men, and was let out at the gate, and crept away. I
had no sooner come back to my place from being one of the party to
handle the gate, than Miss Maryon said in a low voice behind me:
"Davis, will you look at this powder? This is not right."
I turned my head. Christian George King again, and treachery again!
Sea-water had been conveyed into the magazine, and every grain of
powder was spoiled!
"Stay a moment," said Sergeant Drooce, when I had told him, without
causing a movement in a muscle of his face: "look to your pouch, my
lad. You Tom Packer, look to your pouch, confound you! Look to
your pouches, all you Marines."
The same artful savage had got at them, somehow or another, and the
cartridges were all unserviceable. "Hum!" says the Sergeant. "Look
to your loading, men. You are right so far?"
Yes; we were right so far.
"Well, my lads, and gentlemen all," says the Sergeant, "this will be
a hand-to-hand affair, and so much the better."
He treated himself to a pinch of snuff, and stood up, square-
shouldered and broad-chested, in the light of the moon--which was
now very bright--as cool as if he was waiting for a play to begin.
He stood quiet, and we all stood quiet, for a matter of something
like half-an-hour. I took notice from such whispered talk as there
was, how little we that the silver did not belong to, thought about
it, and how much the people that it did belong to, thought about it.
At the end of the half-hour, it was reported from the gate that
Charker and the two were falling back on us, pursued by about a
dozen.
"Sally! Gate-party, under Gill Davis," says the Sergeant, "and
bring 'em in! Like men, now!"
We were not long about it, and we brought them in. "Don't take me,"
says Charker, holding me round the neck, and stumbling down at my
feet when the gate was fast, "don't take me near the ladies or the
children, Gill. They had better not see Death, till it can't be
helped. They'll see it soon enough."
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