Old Alf Arnold gave vent to a roar of anger when he saw the position
of the ark.
“Thousand furies! That varmint will carry off the scow if he’s not
stopped. Help me unbar the door, quick, some of you! I’m going out
to purvent it. You two girls, Bella and Deborah, take your
brothers’, Amos and Abner’s, places in the side bedrooms, and tell
the lads to follow me. Sergeant, you’ll come too, won’t you? Kate,
Muriel, and Jenny, you three guard the loops here.”
“Oh, no, no, father, don’t go out! You are bound to be shot if you
show yourselves outside!” cried Jenny, in the wildest alarm.
“Yes. Let the ark take care of itself, uncle,” exclaimed Muriel,
also in the deepest anxiety. “The Indians in the canoes will pick
you off if you go out, and that one on the ark is powerless to run
off with her while she is fast by her head to the verandah. He will
not venture to show himself, to cut her loose.”
“No, but it will shelter the riptiles behind it at the palisades,
and a dozen of ’em may git over and swim to it; and then where’d we
be?” growled Aunt Kate, who had quite recovered apparently from the
shock of the loss of her forelock.
And the old woman rushed to the door with her husband, and began
hurriedly unbarring it.
Bella and Deborah raced off to take the places of their
brothers-in-law in the side rooms; and Muriel turned and whispered
something in Jenny’s ear.
“I’m with you, Arnold,” Sergeant Dick said quietly, though he still
stood at his loop, revolver in hand, refilling the discharged
chambers in the weapon, and, with his eye on the stern of the scow,
ready to fire if Howling Wolf showed himself.
The front door was thrown open, and instantly out rushed the old
squatter, automatic in one hand and rifle atrail in the other; and
after him ran Sergeant Dick, likewise armed.
Then, after a short pause, followed Abner and Amos, the two
unmarried sons.
The instant Old Alf and the sergeant appeared upon the verandah,
there were infuriated yells from the canoes in front of the “castle”
and a scattered volley was fired at them. But all the bullets
imbedded themselves harmlessly in the stout logs of the “castle”;
and, racing along the verandah unscathed, the two white men gained
the head of the ark, which, however, was now a good six feet or more
from the verandah--the full length of the mooring-rope there.
The squatter, balked, pounced upon the mooring-rope, and hauled
desperately upon it, bawling to the sergeant to lay hold also and
pull.
Instead, John Dick backed quickly to the “castle,” took a run, and
leaped out beside the rope towards the broad bluff bow of the scow.
He landed just within it on both feet. But he fell forward on his
hands and knees.
Up again the next second, he dashed towards the deckhouse, and,
before the cheer that greeted his fine jump from all who witnessed
it, was bounding up the forward ladder to the roof of the cabin.
He was now fully exposed to the fire of the Indians in the canoes,
but his form was not very distinct in the blackness of the night.
Moreover, the rapidity of his movements made him a still more
difficult target.
Panning along the same side of the deckhouse on which Howling Wolf
had been sheltering, Dick peered over, revolver ready cocked and
presented for a shot.
But the Indian chief was no longer on the side of the scow.
The sternmost shutter, swinging loose and wide open, told Dick where
he was--that he had forced the window and got into the cabin.
The ark was now at right angles with the verandah, and was slowly
swinging round into an obtuse angle with it. If permitted, the
current would eventually swing her right round, end for end--lay her
thus, parallel with the verandah again, but beyond it to the
southward.
“He’s got inside the cabin,” shouted Dick.
He sprang down the aft ladder, rushed to the door there, and
thundered upon it with his rifle-butt, on failing to burst it in
with his shoulder.
There were two loopholes in the stern bulkhead of the cabin, one on
either side of the door. But the Indian chief inside had had his
ammunition and firearms rendered useless by his immersions, and so
could not fire out on his daring white foe.
The deckhouse door was giving way before Dick’s frantic battering
upon it with his rifle-butt, and he could feel the ark moving
through the water up to the “castle,” as the old squatter and Amos
and Abner, lying prone on the verandah, pulled upon the bow-rope,
when there was a scrambling noise at the broken window, succeeded by
a loud plunge and splash in the water alongside.
Realizing that his position was getting too warm for him, Howling
Wolf had leaped out through the window into the lake again.
Sergeant Dick at once rushed to that side, but, filled with generous
admiration for the daring and persevering enterprise of the redman,
forbore to shoot at him when his head rose above the
surface--showing like a black ball upon the less dark surface of the
water.
Howling Wolf dived again immediately, and the shots, fired at random
in his direction by the less chivalrous squatters, only hit the
water harmlessly.
And now there burst a great flood of lurid light upon the scene--an
illumination which lit up the surroundings of the “castle” for a
considerable distance all round, beyond the palisading.
Sergeant Dick, astonished beyond measure, turned his head swiftly in
the direction whence the light emanated, half expecting to see the
“castle” on fire.
Instead, he saw, reared above the skylight on his side of the
apex-like roof of the “castle,” a great blazing tar barrel,
suspended by a small chain from a boathook stuck up through the
skylight.
The glare cast an awe-inspiring ruddy glow on everything, and seemed
to strike fire itself from the dark water flowing within the “dock.”
Not only did it show up the canoes, but their redskinned occupants
in the act, for the most part, of getting upon the palisades, and
lifting their light craft over into the “dock.”
Some of the Indians had slipped through the palisades, and were
swimming everywhere, all round, for the “castle.” But by far the
great majority were trying to get the canoes over. The top of nearly
every palisade was crowned by a half-nude copper-colored,
befeathered human form, lifting and straining, while around him,
within and without the palisading, others were swimming or clinging
to the timbers and trying to help him.
Two canoes had been lifted over and their late occupants were
clambering into them again, preparatory to following those swimming
for the verandah.
Sergeant Dick was unable to do more for a moment or two than stare
helplessly at the thrilling spectacle. But he was speedily brought
to a sense of his own danger by the crackle of over a dozen rifles
from the canoes beyond the storming line, and the thudding of as
many bullets into the bulkhead of the ark’s cabin behind him.
Muriel Arnold had bethought herself of the tar-barrel, faced as she
was with the problem how to provide an illumination which would show
up the besiegers--prevent them getting in their canoes within the
“dock,” and thus rushing the “castle” or ark. It was of the
tar-barrel she had whispered to Jenny; and, leaving Aunt Kate to
guard the partly open door of the “castle,” the two girls had rushed
to the ladder leading up to the loft.
The tar-barrel was stored there with other lumber. They had
hurriedly looped a chain round it and through the bunghole, and put
it, on the end of the boathook, through the skylight on the verandah
side of the house.
Jenny dropped a lighted match into the contents, and then she and
Muriel, exerting all their strength, thrust the boathook up, and
jammed it firmly so that it might not slip.
They had raced back, down the ladder, to the living-room, little
suspecting how near they came to costing Sergeant Dick his life by
the sudden and wholly unexpected illumination.
As the apex roof of the “castle” was covered with corrugated iron,
there was no risk of any fragments of the blazing barrel setting it
on fire; and the barrel swung well clear of the wooden staff of the
boathook, which was tipped with iron a good third of its length.
Sergeant Dick saw and felt that the ark was being drawn back by the
squatter and his two sons into its late moored position alongside
the verandah; and so he at once ran round to that side of the
deckhouse.
He stepped upon the narrow footboard bordering the cabin wall, and
was safe from the fire of all the Indians except those on the west
side of the “castle.” And as he sidled swiftly along the plank,
holding to the rail, like the driver or fireman of a locomotive
clambering round it, he presented a difficult mark again,
particularly in the dancing, uncertain glare of the tar-barrel.
He could see Old Alf, Amos, and Abner pulling on the inside bow and
shifting their grip along as the craft swung her stern slowly in
towards the verandah again.
But the sight of the swimmers making for the verandah, as well as
the two canoes within the palisading, told Sergeant Dick that the
best thing he and the three men heaving on the ark’s bow could do
would be to take refuge inside her.
The hail of bullets now being poured upon the ark and the front of
the “castle” from the reserve canoes outside the palisades seemed to
forbid the smallest hope of him or the other three getting back
safely within the house.
He therefore bawled at the top of his voice:
“Bar the door, Mrs. Arnold--Muriel--Jenny! Never mind us out here!
Arnold, we four must get inside the ark, and hold it.”