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He handed them to M. de Barjols' second to examine. The latter tried the triggers and played with the lock, examining to see if they were double-barrelled. They were single-barrelled. M. de Barjols cast a glance at them but did not even touch them. "Our opponent does not know these weapons?" queried M. Valensolle. "He has not even seen them," replied Sir John, "I give you my word of honor."
Half a dozen shots broke out from the spot where the light of the lantern had been suddenly quenched, and we fired twice and shifted ground the moment we pulled the triggers. But the opposition guessed the direction of our sidestep. A bullet lifted my hat into the darkness, and, as I scrambled away, a hand touched my thigh and was immediately taken away.
"You can stand here and see it going along all the time, and you've got to be mighty respectful toward it, I tell you, for there's a shot-gun in every house and a father or a brother more than ready to pull both triggers at once. That's right, I suppose; but it does hamper a fellow mightily. Ever in St. Louis? That's the place.
At such times she cocked both triggers of the gun, prepared to meet him with leaden death if he should burst loose, herself trembling and palpitating and dizzy from the tension and shock. But in time Dennin grew more tractable. It seemed to her that he was growing weary of his unchanging recumbent position. He began to beg and plead to be released. He made wild promises. He would do them no harm.
The long rifle barrel reached from the darkness into the light, past the corner of the rock against which it rested. The bright rays made the little "bead" near the muzzle gleam like a diamond, and lighted up the slit as fine as a hair in the hind-sight. Three little clicks, as if of twigs breaking under a rabbit's foot, told that the triggers had been set and the hammer raised.
He had sprung upon a boulder, and was shouting and waving his arms, but the shouts were drowned in a long, rippling roar of musketry from each side of the khor. The bastion-like cliff was fringed with gun-barrels, with red tarbooshes drooping over the triggers. From the other lip also came the long spurts of flame and the angry clatter of the rifles. The raiders were caught in an ambuscade.
But it was no more than a momentary panic, such as the best troops in the world may be subject to, and our men were quick to rally when they heard themselves called upon for another effort, and saw officers springing up the hill again towards that shot-fretted crest where several Engineers and bluejackets, with the Imperial Light Horse, still clung as if they had looked on Medusa's head, and become part of the rocks among which they lay, only that their forefingers were playing about the triggers, ready in a moment to give back shot for shot to the Boers.
This time the scout seized the rifle with avidity; nor had Magua, though he watched the movements of the marksman with jealous eyes, any further cause for apprehension. "Now let it be proved, in the face of this tribe of Delawares, which is the better man," cried the scout, tapping the butt of his piece with that finger which had pulled so many fatal triggers.
"Well," he replied, with amorous facetiousness, "what man has done, man can do." The lady endeavored gently to withdraw her hand, but he held it firmly. "Will it be a long engagement?" she asked, with a colder smile. "By Jove, not very!" he whispered riotously. She felt like one of those intelligent persons who pull the triggers of supposititiously unloaded guns.
The object of this was apparent: by the time the left of the regiment had emptied their guns, the right would have reloaded, and thus a continuous firing would be maintained. With guns cocked and fingers on the triggers, we waited in tense anxiety for the word to fire. Maj. Ohr was standing a few paces in the rear of the center of the regiment, watching the advance of the enemy.
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