PART FOUR: The Stockade
Chapter 21: The Attack
(continued)
"Out, lads, out, and fight 'em in the open!
Cutlasses!" cried the captain.
I snatched a cutlass from the pile, and someone, at the
same time snatching another, gave me a cut across the
knuckles which I hardly felt. I dashed out of the door
into the clear sunlight. Someone was close behind, I
knew not whom. Right in front, the doctor was pursuing
his assailant down the hill, and just as my eyes fell
upon him, beat down his guard and sent him sprawling on
his back with a great slash across the face.
"Round the house, lads! Round the house!" cried the
captain; and even in the hurly-burly, I perceived a
change in his voice.
Mechanically, I obeyed, turned eastwards, and with my
cutlass raised, ran round the corner of the house.
Next moment I was face to face with Anderson. He
roared aloud, and his hanger went up above his head,
flashing in the sunlight. I had not time to be afraid,
but as the blow still hung impending, leaped in a trice
upon one side, and missing my foot in the soft sand,
rolled headlong down the slope.
When I had first sallied from the door, the other
mutineers had been already swarming up the palisade to
make an end of us. One man, in a red night-cap, with
his cutlass in his mouth, had even got upon the top and
thrown a leg across. Well, so short had been the
interval that when I found my feet again all was in the
same posture, the fellow with the red night-cap still
half-way over, another still just showing his head
above the top of the stockade. And yet, in this breath
of time, the fight was over and the victory was ours.
Gray, following close behind me, had cut down the big
boatswain ere he had time to recover from his last
blow. Another had been shot at a loophole in the very
act of firing into the house and now lay in agony, the
pistol still smoking in his hand. A third, as I had
seen, the doctor had disposed of at a blow. Of the
four who had scaled the palisade, one only remained
unaccounted for, and he, having left his cutlass on the
field, was now clambering out again with the fear of
death upon him.
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