CHAPTER X--AN UNEXPECTED ILLUMINATION

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.”