Sergeant Dick of the Royal Mounted Police A thrilling story of the Canadian woods
continue the attack on the house. Muriel stood by him, gazing also
through the loop and uttering groans of anguish, and clasping her
hands in horror at the slaughter going on.
Then, all at once, Sergeant Dick woke from the trance that seemed to
possess him, and he shouted:
“Arnold, put back the floor, quick, if you can, and let us attempt a
dash-out to recover the ark before it is too late. There can only be
a few Indians left on the verandah and the ark.”
“You’re right, sergeant. I was nigh forgettin’ about the ark.
That’ll do, Kate--Amos. Get ready to rush out and seize the ark
now.”
And the old man darted to the lever beside the ladder in the
cupboard and dragged it back, straining upon it with all his
strength. The trapdoor of the living-room rose slowly into place
again, but the only way the old man had of securing it in position
for the time being was by hooking a chain on to a ring on the lever,
and so keeping this forced back. The bolts that fastened the floor
in place could only be got at through little traps in the floor
itself. All these bolts were connected by a chain which passed
through an iron pipe in the thickness of the flooring to another
lever in the cupboard.
As the floor of the living-room rose into place again, Amos and his
mother hastily wrenched back the fastenings upon the door in the
central passage.
Sergeant Dick was about to unfasten the door before him when Muriel
exclaimed:
“No, no, don’t open this door. One’s sufficient, in case we have to
retreat. We’ll go out the middle one.”
She and Dick thereupon joined Amos and his mother at the middle
door, and as they got it open and were darting through on to the
trembling floor of the living-room, old Alf stepped out of the
cupboard and followed them.
Across the living-room, its floor shaking and vibrating in its
insecure state under them, the five of them raced to the dismantled
verandah and open front door.
The sergeant held the two women back for a moment while he put out
his head and reconnoitered.
Some seven or eight Indians were at either end of the verandah, the
majority of them dripping with water and more or less exhausted.
More were clambering up all along the verandah front, and some four
or five were clustered on the steps, while as many more were
standing in the bow and stern of the ark, apparently making ready to
cast off.
While the fight had been going on inside the house a nearly full
moon had risen and was now bathing the lake and its distant shores
with the most effulgent rays, lighting it up in an enchantingly
lovely way.
Sergeant Dick was glad of that bright moon--although he had no eyes
at the moment for the beauties of the landscape--for it showed him
the positions of all his enemies. And he beheld outside the “dock,”
or outer ring of palisading, a great number of canoes, filled with
Indian warriors, as well as several great log-rafts. Some of the
occupants of the canoes were engaged in trying to force the gate in
the palisades, so as to admit the flotilla to the aid of their
comrades in front of the castle.
The recapture of the ark, therefore, promised to be anything but an
easy task. It looked as if the defenders had waited too long--lost
too much time in slaughtering the wretches they had trapped by their
drop-floor.
But Sergeant Dick and those with him were not the sort to be easily
daunted, flushed with triumph as they were.
As the young police officer put his face out of the open door, some
of the redmen on the verandah saw it, and, yelling in terror,
immediately plunged off into the water.
Encouraged by this evident sign of demoralization and panic, Dick
echoed their yells with a triumphant shout. And springing out on the
verandah, a revolver in either hand, he banged away right and left
as fast as he could pull trigger, hardly waiting to take aim.
His companions poured after him pell-mell, automatics also in either
hand, and even Muriel seemed carried away by the battle-fever now
and fired right and left as fast and well as any of the others.
The Ogalcrees upon the verandah howled in deadly fear, and one and
all followed the example of the first three or four--tumbled
helter-skelter into the water and swam away for the outer
palisading. Those on the ark broke and fled, in equally abject
dismay, round to the opposite side of the cabin, falling over one
another in their wild scramble.
“Back to the central passage, Muriel, Mrs. Arnold, and you, too,
Squatter, and hold the house still. Drop the trap-floor again. Amos,
you and I will do to take the ark. Come on!”
Sergeant Dick tore across the verandah, closely followed by Amos
Arnold, and jumped on to the bulwark of the scow and down into its
bows.
The door of the cabin stood open. Both men were inside it, had
slammed it to behind them, and were shooting the bolts upon it,
before a shot could be fired at them by the Ogalcrees in the canoes
and on the rafts outside the “dock,” much less before the terrified
cravens who had fled round the cabin could pluck up courage and
oppose them.
Muriel and her uncle and aunt had, in like manner, hastily retired
within the “castle” again, run back to the security of the central
passage, and closed the inner door there.
Then Muriel and her aunt “manned” the loops again, commanding the
living-room as before, while old Alf rushed to the cupboard, to be
ready to drop the trap-floor again if necessary.
A moment later, amid howls of baffled rage, the occupants of the
rafts and canoes poured in their shot at the “castle.” But the
bullets only imbedded themselves harmlessly in the thick logs.
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?”