The Frontier, May 1926 — page 50: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

40 I had but a heart-beat in which to realize this when the big chief and eight or nine more were leaping up the barricade upon us. , In spite of our previous luck, our fate, in that instant, hung perilously near the wrong side of the scales. O’Donnell was writhing on the ground with a spear through his breast. Two of the Usagos were dead; the judge had been wounded with a musket ball in the left arm; and while our en- emies swarmed up the breastworks, Gentry and his buccaneers were half- way up the hill. My heart, as the saying goes, had turned to lead. A second before we had been firing behind cover; now we came to grips in a raging, howling hurly-burly of shots, cries, screams, and clashing steel, with reinforcements for the enemy coming up to make an end of us. Had we fallen back, had we wav- ered an instant, all would have been lost. But above all that infernal roar came a desperate bellow from the skipper which turned the tide. “Charge ’em!” he yelled, as the big chief mounted the barricade; and in- stantly, for all his weight, he had leaped upon the breastworks and chopped down the nearest enemy. This acted powerfully tpon the Usagos, who had abandoned their bows and arrows for swords or spears. With a wild yell they bounded up after the skipper; and the rest of us, with pistols and cutlases, were after them on the instant. The big chief hung poised above me as I lunged. His spear was drawn pack for a thrust that would have pierced me through and through. My pistol ball, fired with the left hand, struck him full in the breast. He staggered, but I fended his spear just in time with my cutlas, for with his last spasm he lunged forward. Down he came tumbling, like a big bullock, and I used him for a step to mount the barricade. As I did so O’Donnell staggered part way up, fired a pistol with his last gasp, and struck the can- nibal before me in the leg. He howled and pitched backward to the ground. Horn, scrambling up beside me, was knocked down by a brute with a two-handed sword; but a Usago fin- ished the cannibal with a ripping spear thrust from below. In the next heart- beat four more went down—one with- in the cavern, two on the breastwork, one on the outside. The only remain- ing cannibal turned and ran for his life, THE FRONTIER Thunderstruck by this turn of events, three of the buccaneers also turned and fled. The others halted, uncertainly, about thirty yards from us, Gentry raved hke a berserker be- fore them, with a pistol in one hand, and a cutlas in the other; but he bel- lowed in vain. Uncle George whipped up his pistol and sent a ball whistling through the side of Gentry’s yellow silk shirt, and the man behind him spun crazily and pitched to the ground. All of the remaining buccaneers, in- cluding Dumphey, turned and flew for the trees, Gentry paused a moment still, shak- ing his cutlas at us. I will long re- member that ugly, distorted visage, with the bloody patch on one cheek and the slash of a mouth set like the jaws of a wolf trap. “T’ll get you yet!’ he roared sud- denly, “I’ll feed every man Jack of yott to these niggers if I have to stay here a year!” Shifting quickly to dodge a spear thrown by one of the Ubsagos, -he lifted his pistol and fired both barrels, quick as winking; and Uncle George grunted and fell back against the skipper. Then Gentry turned and ran back down the hill. We were forced to let him go in safety, for my uncle’s shot had been our last, and he was gone before we could reload. Quite out of hand for the moment, our Usagos now ran out and fell upon the wounded cannibals. They had ex- pected no quarter, and they gave none. Of the twenty-three who had fallen near the barricade, not one was left alive for more than a minute after Gentry ran. Meanwhile I ran to my uncle. I found that the pistol ball had cut through his left breast muscles and out under the arm pit. He had also been gashed in the right side with a spear and was bleeding from another cut in the calf of his left leg. His wounds were not necessarily fatal, I could see, but he was very pale and no longer to be counted on as a combatant. The judge was also painfully wounded for the second time; the bullet had passed clean through the biceps of his left arm, barely missing the bone; and, though he insisted on helping Uncle George back behind the breastworks, he fainted dead away as soon as we had set my uncle down. Nor was this all. Killifer’s old wound had reopened, and he had suf- fered another gash in the left shoul- der, ©O’Donnell was stone dead, as were two of the Usagos. A third Usago, with his skull split, lingered for some hours but never recovered consciousness. Three of them had minor wounds, but one had been so severely wounded in the left arm that we feared amputation would be nec- essary. I had expected to see Horn lying stiff as well as O’Donnell; but here I was agreeably surprised. I found him sitting up behind the barricade, with blood flowing from a scalp wound, but no more than a little dazed. A dash of water and a drink of brandy quickly brought him round again. He had fended off the cannibal’s blow with his cutlas, he said, and so only received a glancing crack, probably with the flat side of the blade. Gunderson, who declared with sav- age satisfaction that he had shot at least one cannibal from his corner, and Johannsen, who hobbled down soon afterward from the cliff, to be greeted with hearty cheers, had also escaped without further injuries. But there now remained only the skipper, Horn, myself and six of the Usagos who could be counted on as fit combatants, CHAPTER XXI BARNABY TAKES A CHANCE S A matter of pre- caution the skipper, reg7 4 Horn and I re- ark, Aw loaded all the fire- arms, while the Usagos busied themselves caring for the wounded. But we were not attacked again that afternoon. The buccaneers and the cannibals remained out of sight be- hind the trees on the beach at the north side of the opening, and were doubtless busy enough, as the skipper declared, picking the bird shot from their hides. However, our situation was now ex- tremely serious. The morrow was coming; and even the skipper agreed that we would be hard put to it to withstand another attack. So, while the dusk fell, and the bats came down in a great swarm from their burrows in Execution Knob, grinning hide- ously down at the dead as they flew slothfully toward the palms, we held a grim council. There -was one hope, we were agreed, and this lay in the possible de- parture of the cannibals. Their chief was dead; nothing but disaster had be- fallen them since they came to the Ccomiclboookxks. com