CHAPTER XXII--THE ROUT OF THE BESIEGERS

Sergeant Dick and Amos had no sooner shot the bolts on the inside of the bow door of the ark than they turned and made for the after-cabin, glancing about them as they did so in quest of the three girls.

They saw, instead, Amos’s three brothers--Aaron, Abel and Abner--lying, bound hand and foot and gagged, upon the seats running along either side of the cabin. None of the three appeared to be wounded or injured in any way. Rejoicing at the sight, but unable to do anything for the trio just then, the two rescuers gained the door between the two cabins and looked through.

The aft door was open and there was no one outside it. They could see the silvery moonlight streaming in and flooding the stern-sheets of the scow without.

By the same ghostly radiance they beheld Jenny and her two sisters-in-law lying, like the three in the fore-cabin, bound and gagged, in the berths to either side.

The moon’s rays shot into both cabins, also, through the open loops in the shuttered windows. The Ogalcrees had left the shutters fast, but had opened the loopholes in case they had to besiege the “castle” from the ark.

“Stand there and guard the loops, Amos,” whispered the sergeant. “Shoot at the first one that darkens, while I secure the aft door.”

Amos, accordingly, remained in the doorway between the two cabins, a foot in either as well as a hand grasping a smoking pistol, his eyes ranging quickly along all four windows, ready to fire at any one of them; and the sergeant of police ran towards the aft door.

But as the young trooper and squatter believed, they had heard splashes follow upon their leaping aboard the scow. All the Ogalcrees who had run round the cabin were so scared, they had jumped immediately, one after the other, into the lake, on hearing the white men come aboard.

They, too, were now swimming their hardest for the palisades, the same as were all their exhausted fellow-braves who had escaped from the water-trap in the “castle”--who had wriggled through the open work fencing under it.

It was a complete, panic-stricken rout this time. Black Panther, the new war chief, and fully half of his leading and stoutest sub-chiefs and braves, were floating--shot dead, or drowned--among the piles supporting “Water Castle”; and the rest of the band had had quite a surfeit of fighting for a time at least--had enough of the siege of that impregnable lake-dwelling, anyhow.

Unhindered in any way, therefore, John Dick, the dashing young sergeant of Mounted Police, reached the aft door of the ark’s cabin, or “house,” shut it, and bolted and barred it.

Then he ran to the nearer window, on the side farther from the “castle,” and peered out through the loophole.

He could see no one on the footboard, or bulwark, of the scow outside, but all the Ogalcrees swimming away for dear life--for the safety of the canoes and rafts outside the palisades.

“Hurrah, Amos! We have conquered. The Indians are in full flight everywhere once more, and I don’t think they will come back again for many a long day. They’ve had a defeat this last time that they will not get over in a hurry. Release your brothers, while I attend to your sisters.”

But Amos thought his brothers could remain tied up a little longer. He was not going to lose the opportunity of still further punishing the assailants by the delay it would entail releasing them.

And, as his fellow-rescuer turned from the window in the after cabin, his rifle cracked out from one in the fore cabin.

He fired again and again at the bobbing heads of the Indians in the moonlight, and “crack, crack!” in rapid succession came also the rifles of his mother and father from the front windows of the “castle,” what time Sergeant Dick cut the cords which bound Jenny and her sisters-in-law and removed the gags from their mouths.

Leaving the three women, then, to pull themselves together and restore the circulation of the blood in their cramped limbs, the trooper hurried through into the fore-cabin and freed Amos’s brothers.

They all three at once began roundly abusing Amos for not having released them before, and given them an opportunity of having a parting and vengeful shot or two at the hated foemen.

“Because I knowed it would only purvent _me_ having a shot,” he grinned back at them, while slipping a fresh clip of five cartridges into the breech of his smoking rifle, ere thrusting it again out the loophole and sighting at the enemy. “And look at ye. Ye can’t use your legs or arms yet, so what good would it ha’ bin? Ye couldn’t ha’ done nothink sure.”

“Confound it! My legs mightn’t belong to me, or my arms neither,” growled Aaron, stamping and tumbling about and rubbing his arms vigorously, with his face distorted with the pain the stagnant blood caused him as it began to course again through his veins.

Abel and Abner likewise indulged in anathemas, not loud but deep, against their late captors for the discomfort and suffering they were now enduring, and, with Aaron, stumbled towards the other window and the door to get a shot at the Indians.

But by the time they were able to poke their rifles through the openings the last redman had swum up to the palisades, passed through, and been drawn into a canoe or on to one of the rafts. The Ogalcrees were soon in full retreat, paddling away to the nearer shore, the eastern one.

Abel and Aaron had armed themselves with the rifles of their wives. The weapons had been placed in a corner of the cabin by the Indians after capturing the women.

Abner coolly appropriated Sergeant Dick’s rifle, for the police officer had slipped the piece from his shoulder to free him and his brothers.

Sending a couple of shots apiece whizzing after the canoes and rafts--without any success on account of the deceptive moonlight, the distance the craft were away, and the pain and awkwardness still of their limbs--the three baffled marksmen cursed their ill-luck and their brother Amos again for denying them the better chance. Then their father was heard hailing the ark.

“Amos! Sergeant! Are the girls safe? And are the other lads there?”

“Ay, ay, Squatter! They are all here, quite safe--none the worse, any of them,” called back Dick, merrily, adding with a light laugh, “Can’t you hear your sons cussing because they’ve been cheated by Amos of having a last smack at the redskins?”

“Ay, ay, we’re here, and all on us all right, dad,” shouted Abel, the eldest of the sons, turning from the window to clasp his wife Bella in his arms and exchange mutual gratulations with her.

Aaron--the second and other married brother--greeted _his_ wife Deborah in like manner; while Abner, the youngest of the four sons, restored Sergeant Dick his rifle in a sulky way, without so much as a “Thank you.”

For that matter neither had he or either of the other two young squatters in any way acknowledged the police-sergeant’s kindness in setting them free. But their apparent ingratitude, or want of common politeness, might be excused by their over-eagerness to have a slap at their late captors.

With the dread enemy in full retreat to the shore, there was no need for them to linger inside the ark; and they all now made a move towards the bow-door, Abner and Amos bringing up the rear after closing and fastening the loops on all the windows, and then locking the fore door.

Muriel and her uncle and aunt came out of the “castle” on to the verandah to greet them, and old man Arnold sent a parting shot with his rifle in the direction of the Indians, who could be seen just landing on the eastern shore, shadowy silhouettes against the less dusky background.

As they all reëntered “Water Castle,” chattering and laughing like so many magpies, Muriel and the sergeant fell to the rear, and clasped hands silently but eloquently.

Muriel’s eyes shone brightly in the moonlight, and John Dick thought he had never seen her look quite so lovely as in that silvery radiance upon the white-bathed verandah with its clean-cut shadows.

Neither noticed how Abner, the youngest son, watched them with scowling, jealous-distorted face and fiercely gleaming eyes.

“The painted rips’ll not come back ag’in,” declared old Alf, decidedly. “We gev ’em their bellyful this last time, anyways. Ho, ho! They don’t want another such gruelling, I’ll swar. Bust ’em! They’ve sp’iled our front door, lads and lassies; but we’ll patch it up just for to-night and make it all right, as good as ever, to-morrow. Just see what you can do with it, Abel, Aaron, and Abner. Amos and you girls, Muriel and Jenny, lend me a hand and help fix up the drop-floor as it should be. Bella and Deb, mebbe you will aid mother to get us all somethink to eat and drink, ’specially drink, arter the hot and thirsty work we’ve had.”

“Can’t I be of any assistance?” asked Sergeant Dick.

“Ye’ve done more’n enough, I should say, sergeant, but ye can help the gals and me and Amos to fix up the floor as ye’re such a glutton for work.”

The old trapper or squatter and his daughter and niece and Amos got down on their hands and knees upon the strip of flooring which had remained in position when the rest of the floor dropped.

This strip, of course, was a mere ledge, only a couple of feet wide, just inside the front door and bordering the front wall.

Pressing upon a board, each, the quartet caused it to slide partly out of sight under the front wall, and disclosed a solid steel bar, some four feet long and more than two inches in diameter, lying in the cavity. Attached to the back of the steel bolts was a chain which ran out of sight into an iron pipe under the board.

Opposite the other end of the bolt, in the thickness of the edge of the portion of flooring which had dropped, was a socket, and Muriel tried to push her bolt home in this.

The sergeant promptly insisted on saving her the trouble. He forced the bolt inside the socket as far as it would go, then helped Jenny to push hers home, what time old man Arnold and Amos had shot theirs and gone on to a fifth and sixth, and the other three brothers were fixing the dismantled outer door in place again by piling all manner of things against it, including the armored tiller-screen from the ark.

The drop-floor was still anything but quite firm under their feet, even with the six great bolts shot, and the old man asked Sergeant Dick to follow him through to the central passage and see him finish fixing it.

Full of curiosity, the young police officer accompanied him to the cupboard where the levers were, and the old man explained that, by wrenching back one, all six bolts they had just shot were drawn out simultaneously, but that the floor in the ordinary way would not give until six more pivoted iron buttons, also hidden in the flooring, were drawn aside.

A second lever contrived this, and a third would draw them back again. This third lever was now pulled, while all in the living-room were told to stand off the drop part of the floor. And then Arnold went on to tell John Dick that he had contrived to raise the trap-floor by means of yet a fourth lever, which dragged on a chain, that always hung slacked under the house, attached to the edge of the trap-floor and passing through a ring or socket in the stationary part of the flooring opposite and round back to the lever.

“By pulling on this ’ere fourth lever, then, you see, sergeant, the trap-floor is raised and kin be held in place until we can fix up all the reg’lar fastenings. Come now, let’s join the others ag’in, and have somethink to eat and drink.”

“And I’ve got something to tell you all that will astonish you very much, Squatter--something I discovered among the cliffs on the west shore.”