CHAPTER XIX--THE SECOND SIEGE OF “WATER CASTLE”

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.