CHAPTER XX--A COOLER FOR THE INVADERS

The Indians, however, did not make another immediate rush, but opened a terrific fusillade upon the two open loops from the door and side-window of the ark’s cabin. The craft swung broadside on to the verandah; and the gang on the steps, grasping the dangling rope, made this fast again.

Sergeant Dick and Mrs. Arnold blazed back fiercely with a brace of pistols each, keeping well to the side of their loops, and so escaping being shot down by the bullets that now occasionally came winging their way in.

The voice of the Black Panther rang out, issuing an unintelligible order.

Sharp upon it, the two doors of the ark, the one in the bow and the other aft, were thrown open and out poured the Ogalcrees in two dense crowds.

Yelling and whooping, the one in the bows came swarming on to the verandah, led by the six dripping braves from the stairs, who brandished their wet and useless rifles and now more serviceable tomahawks.

Sergeant Dick and Aunt Kate concentrated the fire of their four pistols upon this band--fired into it as fast as they could.

The foremost red men stumbled and dropped rapidly, tripping up or otherwise incommoding those behind, several of whom fell over them. But, bounding over the fallen, others dashed up to the loopholes, and the sergeant and Aunt Kate had only just time to slam the sliding covers over these, to prevent being shot in at and the apertures taken.

Hastily the two defenders hooked the loop-covers, then ran to the adjacent windows, which also commanded the verandah.

Quickly, but cautiously, opening the loops there, the pair fired out again at an inward angle, towards one another, so as to sweep the doorway once more with a cross fire.

But the angle at which they were both obliged to fire being greater now, they could not hit the men attacking the door, only pot at those farther back. The door was trembling and groaning under the energetic onslaught being made upon it.

And then, all at once, a rifle-barrel was thrust in at Aunt Kate’s loop, and the deadly muzzle spurted a jet of flame and smoke almost into her cheek.

A second rifle was quickly beside the first. The brave old woman managed to push both rifles aside and fire out and wound one of their redskin owners. But she could not dislodge or thrust the weapons back, nor close the loop cover altogether.

“To the inner room! Retreat to the middle passage, sergeant,” she screamed. “They’ve got my loophole.”

She turned and ran for the nearest of the three doors behind her, firing back as she did so at the loop she was thus forced to abandon in order to distract the aim of the marksmen outside.

Two bullets followed her, but the shots only imbedded themselves on either side of the inner door, through which she vanished the next moment.

Sergeant Dick saw through his loop some half a dozen of the Indians staggering up the landing steps from the ark, hugging between them a stout spar--a spare mast-yard--with the evident intention of using it as a battering-ram against the door.

He turned his two revolvers upon the gang and shot down three men. Then the same number of rifles were thrust in at _his_ loop, and a knife and a tomahawk came whizzing in, just missing his face.

Desperately he shot out, at the same time as he pushed the rifle-barrels aside. All three of these discharged their deadly contents in the same instant close past his head, the bullets thudding into the logs of the roof.

One of the rifle-barrels was withdrawn--fell out again, as its owner slid down with a rubbing, scraping noise and a deep groan, shot through the shoulder by Dick. But the other two remained, and their owners strove to work their muzzles round towards him.

“Come away! Run for the inner rooms, sergeant! We can hold them there,” screamed Aunt Kate. “Quit, and leave ’em the loop!”

Seeing the futility of trying any longer to hold it, the police officer reluctantly obeyed her, wheeling and darting, crouched, for the door just behind him.

He fired back as _he_ ran and jumped from side to side, and the old woman also covered his retreat by firing at his loop inside of the one she herself had abandoned.

She had closed and locked and bolted the door inside which she had fled, and was now at the door of the central passage, looking out through a loop in it. Needless to say, she had closed and was fastening this door also.

The reader, perhaps, may need reminding that there were three doors in a line along the inner wall of the living-room of “Water Castle”--all on the opposite side to the entrance. The middle one led into the central passage or compartment, and the other two into Aaron’s and the old couples’ bedrooms respectively, on either side of it.

Several shots were fired in through the two captured loopholes at Dick as he darted for the inner door, but, thanks to his own tactics and Mrs. Arnold’s covering fire, he gained it untouched.

It had been left open for the convenience of passing quickly in the defense of the house, if necessary, from one room to another--and, in fact, all round this--and, darting within, he swung it to behind him, then promptly locked and bolted it.

He was about to open the loop in it--for every door in the house was provided with such, covered over with a little steel slide that could be hooked to when shut--when Mrs. Arnold, Muriel, and Old Alf appeared in the door beside him communicating with the central passage.

“You are safe, sergeant? Oh, thank heaven!” cried Muriel.

As she spoke, Sergeant Dick saw behind her, inside the central passage, Amos Arnold on hands and knees in the act of dropping a trapdoor in the floor into its place.

The squatter and his son on being thrown into the water by the capsizing of the canoe had contrived below the surface to throw off the grasp of their coppery antagonists, and with sharpened wits, and, strong swimmers as both were, they promptly struck away under the water and rose beneath the verandah.

Under there they were safe, of course, from being seen by their foes in the ark or on the platform; and, being unpursued by their late captors, the natural idea occurred to both to slip inside the piles and braces below the house itself and try and gain admission to this through the trapdoor.

The darkness, of course, was also in their favor. Indeed, it was so dark under the “Castle” that they both mistook each other for a foe when they caught sight of one another crawling through the piles.

Recognizing each other in time, however, they then swam silently to one of the canoes moored under the house and the trapdoor, and, clambering into it, tried the trap. As they expected, it was fast, and they were unable to force it; so, waiting for a lull in the fighting over their heads, they knocked to let the inmates know of their whereabouts.

“Sergeant, you’re a brick! The most dandy fighter and man I’ve ever struck yet,” shouted the old squatter. “Let ’em break in, the painted rips--the cutthroat varmints! They’ll get a reception they don’t at all expect--one as ’ill rather cool their ardor and put a damper on their spirits. Hee, hee, hee!”

“But we’ve got to pay ’em,” screamed his wife. “There are the other three lads and the three girls to avenge if we can’t rescue ’em.”

“We’ll rescue ’em if they’re still alive, mother,” growled Amos. “And if my brothers are not, the girls are sure to be.”

He disappeared inside the door of his parents’ bedroom, while they went to the door leading into the living-room. Muriel stepped inside the room where Dick was and crossed to his side as he threw open the loop in the door before him and hurriedly proceeded to reload his two automatics to their fullest capacity.

“You had better stand to one side, Mu--Miss Arnold,” he said, “so as to be out of the way of any shots that may come through the door. It will hardly keep shots out like the front one.”

“The door’s stouter than you think. It’s double, with a plate of steel between the two sheathings,” she answered. “And the Ogalcrees will get the biggest surprise of their lives when they burst in.”

Thunderous crashes were resounding through the house from the front door, upon which the Indians were using the improvised battering-ram with effect. A couple of their number at either of the captured loops were firing into the castle, and the living-room was full of smoke and the acrid fumes of burnt gunpowder.

More of the assailants were trying to force the shutters upon the other front windows.

Crash! One of the hinges of the front door gave, and a long triangular crack showed some of the Indians outside.

Crack, crack, crack, crack! spoke the rifles of the four defenders, and the bullets, surging across the intervening room, rattled upon the window shutters or flew out the widening gap of the door.

A scream of pain outside told that the sergeant’s shot, as usual, had found its human billet. The Indians, using the spar--carrying it by means of short ropes noosed round it--retreated until their rearmost man was on the very edge of the verandah; then forward they all rushed again and dashed the “ram” once more violently against the door.

With another splintering, rending crash the second hinge was burst from its hold, and the door rolled open, precipitating the foremost of the ram-bearers inside the living-room.

Two of them were at once shot down by the sergeant and Amos, while two more fell back, dropping their end of the log and clasping their arms.

With a united yell of triumph the rest of the Ogalcrees came swarming in, however, and charged across the room for the three doors opposite. Out rang six revolvers as rapidly as such weapons can speak, and as many ceaseless streams of fire flew at different angles through the rushing ranks of the foe.

A man fell or staggered at every shot. Nevertheless, the intruders were not to be checked by the hottest fire now, believing that victory was within their grasp.

They poured into the room, jostling each other, crowding upon one another until the apartment was nearly full and there were not half a dozen warriors left outside.

The fast-speaking six revolvers, however, prevented the front ranks from reaching the three doors within. And suddenly, as if by magic, to the rattle of a bolt wrenched back, the whole floor of the living-room _dropped like a trapdoor_, plunging all the surging, tightly packed invaders, feet first, into the water below the stronghold!