“I can see nothing,” replied the other, after a few moments search, “unless we stop it with the bedding.”
“A wise plan that. The Injins would soon set fire to it, and if they didn't burn us out, they would soon smoke us out. Either would suit their purpose.”
“Let him stuff it with his head, corporal,” interposed Green, “I'm sure that's thick enough for a plug.”
“Perhaps there's a head in it already,” suggested Philips, “there was a hand just now--the other may have followed.”
“By jingo I'll try,” returned Green, “I'd give a week's grog to be able to prick a feller with this playthin'.”
So saying, he knelt upon the floor, and holding his musket in a horizontal position, a few inches above it, he gave a furious thrust into the aperture. To his astonishment, for notwithstanding his half bravado, he had not seriously anticipated such a result, he found the advance of his weapon slightly arrested by a yielding body, and even had not a sharp cry of pain from the other extremity of the trough, satisfied him of the fact, the peculiar sensation he experienced as the steel overcame the resistance was sufficient to convince Green, little accustomed even as he had been to bayonet men, that the bayonet had entered into some soft part of the human body.
To the cry of the wounded man, succeeded a savage and threatening yell from the united band, and now re-commenced the grating sound which had two or three times before excited the conjectures of the besieged.
“Ah I yell away you devils; that's all the good you'll get,” exclaimed Green, exulting at his success; “but don't take so tight a grip of my bayonet. I say, Philips, lend us a hand, if I shan't lose my musket with that fellow strugglin' like a speared Mascalinga.”
Both now pulled at the firelock, with all their strength. Suddenly the resistance ceased, and they fell sideways on the floor, bringing the musket with them, but without the bayonet. At the same moment a shot was fired into the aperture, and the ball whizzing by the ear of Philips, and passing through Green's right leg, lodged in the partition beyond.
“Stand aside, men,” shouted the corporal, “stand from before that hole, or we shall be marks in this light for the skulking villains.”