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Presenting my piece, I hailed him to descend or be shot. There was silence for a space, when the black barrel of a musket was thrust forth, leveled at my head. Instantly, Jarl's harpoon was presented at a dart; two to one; and my hail was repeated. But no reply. "Who are you?" "Samoa," at length said a clear, firm voice. "Come down from the rigging. We are friends."
Rain, the first that had descended for many days, fell in fitful showers. It must have seemed to the women either that the elements sympathised with them, or that the extreme darkness was favourable to the execution of their plan, for about midnight one of them rose from her bed, and crept noiselessly to the corner of her hut, where she had seen Quintal deposit a loaded musket the previous day.
Secondly, he is by no means necessarily a fool, but, if it came to shooting against two, he might have sense enough to get his first shot upon the one who held the musket a point which your mistress overlooked perhaps." I bowed to her gravely.
A few sea-birds flying high in the air were the only living creatures which had greeted their vision since landing. "Will you be afraid to remain here while I go for the provisions and musket left at the spring?" asked John. "No, we have nothing to fear." "I believe this part of the coast to be entirely uninhabited." She made no answer, and he went for the gun and provisions.
The men up there among the bushes never slept, and they allowed no one of their enemies to come near enough for a good shot with a musket. The chances are ninety-nine out of a hundred that they were rangers, Great Bear, and we may speak of them as rangers.
Dermot saw that the corpse was that of a low-caste Hindu, clad only in a dirty cotton koorta and dhoti. A Tower musket lay beside him. The wild firing died down again. The sun was setting; and the soldier judged that the attackers were probably waiting for darkness to rush him. Why they did not do so at once, since they were so numerous, surprised him; but he surmised that it was lack of courage.
He would stand for some time casting lamb's-eyes at the object of his affections to the amorous audacity of the full-grown sheep he never soared then suddenly, without the slightest provocation, he would discharge at her a compliment, elaborate, long-winded, Grandisonian, as a raw recruit fires his musket, shutting his eyes, and incontinently take to flight, without waiting to see the effect of his shot.
Often have I had to run into the arms of some savage, when his club was swung or his musket leveled at my head, and, praying to Jesus, so clung round him that he could neither strike nor shoot me till his wrath cooled down, and I managed to slip away. Often have I seized the pointed barrel and directed it upwards, or, pleading with my assailant, uncapped his musket in the struggle.
"It was while the light still was faint that I thought I heard, coming up through the mist, a little rattling sound, such as might be made by a man stumbling and dropping his musket among the broken rocks. Just then the mist was too thick for me to see twenty feet below me. I was sure that something bad was going on down there, but I did not want to make a fool of myself by giving a false alarm.
In order to be prepared for any such that might come in his way, as well as to save their ammunition, of which they had but a limited supply, Saloo had spent the last few days of their sojourn upon the coast in the manufacture of a weapon well suited for such a purpose, even better than musket or rifle. It was the "Sumpitan," or blow-gun.
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