CHAPTER VIII--THE SIEGE OF “WATER CASTLE”

Though inwardly resenting Amos Arnold’s behavior and words, Sergeant Dick at once went to one of the windows in the front of the house, and thrust his rifle through the slit in the armored shutter.

Not a rifle “barked” now; all the shooting had ceased. The inmates of the “castle” were reserving their fire until the canoes should draw near enough to allow of their taking fairly accurate aim in the darkness; and the Indians, after that first wild whoop of the onset, gave their whole attention to getting close in.

There were six windows in the front, and two more to either side, of the living-room, which therefore contained ten loopholes, as well as the door.

Uncle Alf had posted himself in the west front corner, and his wife was in the corresponding corner on the east side.

Sergeant Dick and Muriel took a window on either side of the door; and Amos, having quickly made this fast again, rushed back to his prearranged station in his brother Aaron’s bedroom.

Howling Wolf and his four companions, lying prostrate in their drifting canoe, were the first to resume firing. Five streams of fire spurted simultaneously from the shapeless smudge their craft now appeared in the gloom, and as many bullets thudded harmlessly against the logs of the “castle,” and buried themselves in the thick walls.

At once all four whites in the front room focused their rifles upon the canoe and poured in volley after volley.

In the hope of putting a swift termination to the revolt by killing Howling Wolf, who was evidently, from what he had heard of the man, the chief promoter and fomenter of it, Sergeant Dick aimed at the prow where he believed the Indian chief lay.

All his shots flew true to their mark, and on his third shot striking the craft four dark figures were seen to jump up in it and literally throw themselves overboard.

Such was their mad haste to get into the comparative safety of the water that they overset the canoe, and it floated bottom upwards.

“Hurray! One of ’em’s settled, that’s pretty sartin,” yelled Old Man Arnold, gleefully. “Only four leaped out. The fella in the bows didn’t, and that should be Howling Wolf hisself.”

“Do you think he’d be fool enough to remain in the bows arter giving himself away with his first shot?” asked his wife, contemptuously. “I thought you knowed Indian cunning better nor that, Alf.”

“Anyways, one on ’em’s settled, and it’s as likely to be him as not,” returned the old man testily.

All the defenders could now be heard firing rapidly--from every quarter of the house. The Indians on the east side were the first to reply to the fusillade, and those on the west side and in front quickly chimed in.

But it was so inky dark now that only the flashes of the redmen’s rifles revealed their whereabouts to their white foes, who were thus firing almost at random.

Thud, thud, thud! The besiegers’ bullets rattled like hail against the stout walls of the castle; but so thick were these that not one entered.

Clang! An occasional shot found the iron-plated door or a shuttered window.

On the other hand, the defenders, sighting swiftly in the direction of a rifle-flash, were gratified again and again by hearing the death-shriek or scream of pain from a stricken enemy; and Sergeant Dick’s companions were quick to note that he never fired a single shot but there came such an answer.

He had realized that it would be madness to hold his hand or seek to spare the redmen, in the circumstances. It was their lives or the lives of all in the “castle.”

Under cover of the now pitchy darkness the Indians were likely to reach the house; and, once they were swarming about it in their canoes, in such numbers as they were, nothing could prevent some of them getting upon the roof or bursting in the windows and door.

They must be kept at bay at all costs.

Putting all pitying thoughts for the misguided wretches, therefore, out of his heart, he grimly watched the successive rifle-flashes in front of him, and shot back straight for one or another.

None of the other inmates of “Water Castle” knew of the fame and nickname he had won among his fellow-troopers of the Mounted Police for his deadly skill with the rifle, but “Sure-shot Jack Dick” never deserved his reputation and _sobriquet_ better than he did now.

“Jumping snakes, sergeant, but you seem to be makin’ ’em squeal!” shouted Old Man Arnold delightedly. “Dang me if I don’t hear a yelp every time you fires!”

“That’s so,” cried Muriel, almost proudly. “I don’t believe he has thrown away a single shot.”

“Good boy! Keep it up,” roared the lion-like old woman. “He has cat’s eyes, sure. I wish I had. This blamed darkness beats me. Peg away, lads! Keep it up or we’ll have the devils on us with this blamed darkness. I wish them palisades outside were higher, Alf.”

“Reckon they’ll not get over ’em easy all the same, old woman. Say, wish I had put up a searchlight or somethink of that kind on the peak of the roof, so as to show up besiegers at night.”

But the hot fire maintained by the defenders, and particularly the amazingly deadly shooting of Sergeant Dick, checked the onset of the Indians. Canoe after canoe ceased paddling forward and turned about, its occupants no longer caring to risk bringing a bullet out of the darkness into their midst by shooting at the black shadow which represented the stronghold of their enemies.

So many of their number had been hit that it seemed as if the pale-faces could see in the dark, and, in their superstition and ignorance, the redmen were inclined to believe that there was witchcraft in such swift retribution whenever they fired a shot.

Their firing dwindled. Instead of pressing on to the storm of their enemies’ stronghold, they began to circle futilely round it, firing only an occasional shot and then paddling swiftly away to escape the expected bullet in return.

“We’ve checked them. They’re keeping off, father,” yelled Aaron from Jenny and Muriel’s bedroom, in the north-east corner of the house.

The words were still ringing in the ears of the four in the front of the house, which, as already explained, faced southward down the lake, when Sergeant Dick saw three or four large, roundish black objects, like pumpkins--or, rather, like Swedish turnips with the leaves sticking up in the air--suddenly appear as if by magic on the edge of the verandah!

The strange spectacle was impressed as it were forever on the retina of his eyes. Ever afterwards he could call up the strange vision at will of those three or four large round, turnip-like, apparently leaf-crowned objects, growing, as it seemed, along the edge of the verandah.

As his startled eyes rested upon them, a horrified gasp burst from Muriel at the window on the other side of the door, and a curse and a roar of rage respectively from the lips of Old Man Arnold and his wife.

The four turnip-like objects were the feather-crowned heads of four Indians, who had swum silently in through the palisades up to the house and had climbed up as many of the piles supporting the verandah.

Even as the four defenders in the living-room of the “castle” discovered them they swung themselves up like cats, by means of the pillars of the verandah, on to this and made a dash at the windows.

Muriel, Aunt Kate, and Sergeant Dick had their rifle-barrels clutched by the invaders. Old Man Arnold managed to whip his back inside his loophole in time.

The assailants would not, of course, have been able to retain hold of the rifle-barrels had the defenders not slackened their fire some time before and allowed the metal to cool.

Swift upon their grab at the protruding tubes, the redmen hurled in with unerring aim through the loophole-slits a knife or a tomahawk.

It was assuredly only because Providence was watching over the fates of Sergeant John Dick and Muriel Arnold in that hour that they did not have a knife apiece buried to the haft in their faces, standing looking out of the loopholes as they were.

As it was, Sergeant Dick had his left cheek gashed open by one knife in its passage; and Muriel felt the missile directed at her pass through her hair.

As for Mrs. Arnold, a tomahawk cleft her gray forelock short off close to her scalp. Flying onward with the force of its fling, the weapon struck and bit deep into the pantry door behind her, where it stuck, quivering from blade to handle-butt.

Her husband, too, had a narrow escape. The tomahawk hurled in at him whizzing close past his head, as he stumbled sideways after pulling in his rifle.

As all four in the living-room stood for the moment appalled by their own narrow escapes, and the belief that one or more of their number must have been struck down, their assailants outside emitted the bloodcurdling war-whoop in chorus.

Then, swift upon it, or, rather, while still giving vent to it, the four daring braves wheeled, abandoned the rifle-barrels they had grabbed, and, darting to pillars, began swarming up these to the sloping roof like monkeys.

At either end of the verandah there was a low railing, and, by stepping on this, two of them were clambering on to the roof almost before the sergeant and his three companions in the living-room could recover from the sudden attack.

The whoops of the quartet just outside were promptly answered by a tremendous yell from the darkness all round about; and it was plain the Indians in the canoes were again tearing towards the house, as fast as they could ply their paddles, to help their intrepid and crafty chief to rush the place.

For, perhaps needless to say, the four braves on the verandah were Howling Wolf and three of those who had been with him in his canoe.

Aunt Kate had been right. The wily young sagamore had withdrawn from the prow of the canoe, and wriggled aft, after firing his treacherous shot at the police-sergeant. And Sergeant Dick might have fired the three shots he put into the canoe’s prow uselessly had his third bullet not struck a rifle left there and been deflected sideways, so that it grazed the head of the fifth warrior in the craft, stunning him.

On that, at the sagamore’s order, the others had jumped overboard, and, when the canoe overset, Howling Wolf aided the unconscious man, supported him on his shoulder, and suggested the daring move of swimming silently up to the “castle” and taking the defenders in the front of the house by surprise.

The four, as we have seen, brought off the stratagem fairly successfully. They had put their senseless companion softly across one of the ties of the gate in the palisades, had consulted and laid their plans in the faintest of faint whispers as they had swum up to these, then slipped through them. And only the proverbial white man’s luck had saved the four defenders of the living-room from being struck down, dead or dying, by their deftly in-flung tomahawks and knives.