Sergeant Dick, in vague suspicion that all was not as it should be
on the ark, when no answer was returned to the second hail by the
squatter and his wife, hurriedly bundled Muriel and the old woman
inside the open door of the castle.
Deborah and Bella and Jenny had run to the edge of the verandah to
greet the supposed occupants of the scow.
The craft’s broad nose struck the landing-stage close by the little
ladder, just missing running into the canoe in which the old man and
Amos still were.
In the same instant the rear door of the cabin of the ark was thrown
open and out poured a great throng of redskins, led by Howling Wolf
himself.
Shrieking their war-whoop exultantly, they rushed _en masse_ for the
bow and bounded on to the verandah. The three women lining its edge
were nearly knocked down by the rush, and were promptly secured by
some, while the chief, with the main body, tore across to the door
of the castle.
Half a dozen of the redskins leaped down into the canoe and seized
Old Alf and Amos, upsetting the frail craft, however, in their
eagerness and wild haste, and plunging them all, captors and
captured, into the water.
Sergeant Dick, as may be supposed, was not taken so completely by
surprise as the others. As he stood in the doorway, suspicious and
alarmed at the strange silence aboard the ark, he held his rifle at
the ready.
On the rush of the Ogalcrees he promptly aimed from the hip at the
foremost and pressed the trigger, then hastily retreated inside the
door--seeing the others outside taken and no hope of rescuing them.
He slammed it to, flinging his whole weight against it while he
turned the key.
“Guard the left window, quick!” he yelled. “Muriel, you shoot the
bolts. Fire out on them, Mrs. Arnold, or they’ll be in.”
He darted himself to the right-hand loophole, leaving the door only
on the lock. But Muriel at once sprang to it and thrust home first
the bottom bolt and then the top, while a dozen musket-butts
battered thunderously, but otherwise fruitlessly, upon its armored
iron plating outside.
All the steel shutters had been drawn and secured over the windows,
and, thrusting open the loophole in his, Dick poked the muzzle of
his rifle quickly through. He pointed it at a sharp angle across the
doorway without, and pressed the trigger.
Without waiting to hear the three simultaneous screams of agony that
followed the shot, he whipped back the bolt of his rifle, ejecting
his spent cartridge, then forced it home again, bringing another
cartridge into play from the magazine, and pressed the trigger
again.
Two agonized howls answered the shot this time. And old Mrs.
Arnold’s revolver cracked rapidly out of the left-hand window,
eliciting more yells of pain and terror from the Indians attacking
the door.
Through the narrow slit before him, the young police officer saw the
redskins give back from the door, some running to either side along
the verandah, ducking as they went; others--the greater
body--retreating across to the ark.
Five of their number lay in their death-throes just outside the
door, and three more were dragging themselves after the others,
badly wounded.
Not only had all the shots from the house told amongst the densely
packed assailants around the door, but Sergeant Dick’s first shot
through the window, being fired at such close range, went through
the bodies of two men and mortally wounded a third behind them,
while his second, in the same way, accounted for two more.
His keen eyes, used to seeing in the dark and ranging quickly over
the retreating Ogalcrees, saw some of them carrying the body of
their chief, who lay as one dead in their arms.
Howling Wolf had paid the penalty of his crimes at last--had been
shot dead by the sergeant’s hastily but well aimed shot from the
hip.
Both Mrs. Arnold and Sergeant Dick held their fire the moment their
foes fell back from the door, for fear of hitting the three girls
taken prisoners, and who were being hurried by some of their captors
aboard the ark.
“Oh, my cousins! Jenny, and Deborah and Bella! What has become of
them? Are they killed--murdered?” panted Muriel wildly, in horrified
accents.
“No, and they won’t be. Calm yourself, Miss Arnold, and lend a
further hand. You can help by handing me a brace of revolvers or
automatics. They are better than a rifle for close quarters like
this.”
“Yes. Help, gal! Help! Your cousins air taken prisoners, and--and
your uncle and my brave boys must--must be slaughtered. Oh, the
fiends--the cutthroat villains! I’ll have two Indian lives for every
one of theirs--ay, and more!”
And the grief-frenzied old woman thrust the barrel of her
six-shooter out again through her loophole and blazed away whenever
she saw a foeman, turning her weapon upon the three wounded wretches
trying to drag themselves aboard the ark when the others had all
vanished behind shelter.
She shot the three dead. One tumbled into the lake, another lay
across the bulwark of the ark, and the third just in front of its
fore cabin, inside which he was lugged by his comrades the next
moment.
“Watch all the windows on your side, Mrs. Arnold,” said the
sergeant. “Some of the Ogalcrees have fled along the verandah to
either end. They may try and force one or other of our loop-holes.
I’ll be ready for them on this.”
“And I’ll take the door,” said Muriel, quietly. “I’ll fire through
the lower loop in it if the Indians attempt a second rush.”
“Be careful, and don’t unnecessarily expose yourself, Miss Arnold,”
cautioned Dick. “If they come on, strong, you’d better abandon the
loop and secure it, or they may, if they get up again, be able to
fire in through it on us.”
“Oh, my man and our fine lads!” moaned the squatter’s wife.
Then with a savage execration she blazed away again rapidly through
the loop before her. Three of the half-dozen Ogalcrees who had
jumped into the canoe to capture Amos and his father, and had been
soused into the lake with the pair by the craft capsizing, were to
be seen peering cautiously over the edge of the verandah where the
ladder was.
All six had got upon the steps and were cowering there, dripping
wet, collecting their energies for another rush upon the door in
concert with their comrades cowering at either end of the verandah,
when those aboard the ark should return to the attack.
The scow had not been made fast, of course, to the verandah. Being
run bow on against this, it had hitherto merely been kept in place
by the impulse of the sail.
When, however, the assailants all came tumbling pell-mell aboard
again to escape the deadly fire from the house, the craft had
sheered off and was now a good ten feet and more from the platform.
The death of their intrepid and resourceful leader--a host in
himself--as well as their being shut out of the “castle,” when they
had fully counted on being able to get in by their quick rush,
besides their fresh losses, had considerably damped the Ogalcrees’
ardor.
If it had not been that they could not very well abandon the men
left on the verandah, they were so heartily sick of the whole siege
by now, they would probably have raised this and cleared off in the
ark, satisfied with its contents and the prisoners they had managed
to secure. They would probably have paid no heed to the exhortations
of the Black Panther, the next in authority to the dead chief, and
who now assumed command and was all eagerness--as it was the first
of any importance he had ever held--to retrieve their previous
defeats and win glory for himself.
As it was they decided upon another attack. One of their number,
without exposing himself, flung a rope out of a window in the cabin
to the gang on the landing-ladder.
Drawing very little water, but just skimming along the surface, as
before explained, the ark was very easily moved. All six Ogalcrees
on the steps, keeping their heads well below the level of the
platform--out of sight and reach of Aunt Kate--began promptly
hauling on the rope.
“They are returning to the attack. They’ve got a rope to the steps,
and the fellows there are pulling them in,” Sergeant Dick said. And
leveling his rifle again through his loop, he took steady aim at the
taut rope stretching between the ark and the verandah.
As he was about to press the trigger there came a loud, persistent
knocking upon the floor of “Water Castle”--_somewhere underneath
it_.
Muriel and her aunt uttered cries of astonishment, if not alarm,
likewise helping to distract his aim somewhat as he pulled the
trigger. Nevertheless, his shot struck the rope, severing a couple
of the strands.
“Well done, sergeant!” cried Mrs. Arnold. “Shoot again and cut it in
two--foil ’em! Muriel, that must be your uncle and Amos knocking
underneath. They have swum below the house and are at the trapdoor
for sartin. Go and see girl, quick!”
“Be careful, though, Miss Arnold. It may be some of the Ogalcrees,”
said Sergeant Dick, hurriedly ejecting his used cartridge and
bringing another into the breech. “Call out--ask who is
there--before you open the trap.”
Muriel flew towards the central passage where the trapdoor was; and
Sergeant Dick again dwelt carefully upon his aim.
Crack! His piece spoke and the rope parted, the severed ends flying
up and backwards, like black snakes in the darkness.
“Hooray! You are indeed a dandy shot, sergeant,” cried Mrs. Arnold.
“To hit and cut a rope in this blamed darkness! But, look out!
You’ve not stopped the ark’s ‘way.’”
The “way” or impetus the ark had, made that light though clumsy
craft come on towards the landing-stage, and the next moment it had
again bumped into this.