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"I was relying upon the muskets captured in the Nancy," said General Howe, "to supply the gentlemen in General Robertson's command; also the loyal Irish Volunteers under Captain Forest, and the Fencibles under Colonel Graham, and those whom Colonel Creen Brush, a loyalist from New York, expects to raise. I am greatly gratified by this exhibition of loyalty on the part of the citizens.
Then I ran along my battery, and directing the next two of the old muskets to the arched roof, I fired them off, bringing down with a crash handfuls of rough lime and small bits of stone, mingled no doubt with the ricocheted bullets themselves. At any rate our tarry Galligaskins soon had enough of it. He turned and made good his retreat towards the stairs up which he had forced his way.
He stood stock-still in a prophetic attitude, as though he were the Genius of Brittany rising from a slumber of three years, to renew a war in which victory could only be followed by twofold mourning. "A pretty fellow this!" thought Hulot; "he looks to me like the emissary of men who mean to argue with their muskets."
I could hear a dropping fire of muskets, and guessed that those on board were keeping up a fire on any who so showed themselves on the beach. The natives got more and more excited, and kept jabbering together and pointing away along the coast; and I guessed that some of their own craft were coming to attack the ship. "Presently I heard one of the guns, then another and another.
The voices of sailors came cheerfully from a bark at anchor below the point. The muskets of the sentries gleamed brightly on Alcatraz, and the rolling of drums swelled on the breeze. Farther on, the hills of San Francisco, cottage-crowned and bordered with wharves and warehouses, met his longing eye. Such is the Legend of Devil's Point.
The doctor's watch were all back at their loopholes, the rest were busy loading the spare muskets, and every one with a red face, you may be certain, and a flea in his ear, as the saying is. The captain looked on for a while in silence. Then he spoke. "My lads," said he, "I've given Silver a broadside. I pitched it in red-hot on purpose; and before the hour's out, as he said, we shall be boarded.
"The only thing these Dyaks complain of is, that Nakodah Mahomed told them he had the Tuan Besar's chop, and gave them to understand that the powder, muskets, &c., in his possession, belonged to the Tuan Besar; in consequence of which they carried these goods for Nakodah Mahomed without receiving any payment for their labor.
They were, I say, rubbing a filthy black semi-fluid into his hair at the moment when Cludde and I, with our negroes behind, made a sudden irruption into the kitchen. We had our muskets with us, and seizing mine by the barrel, I brought the stock down on the head of the fellow nearest me, and he dropped heavily to the floor.
The column, thus bucklered, to the shame of Spanish chivalry, by female bosoms, moved in good order toward the battery. The soldiers leveled their muskets with steady aim over the shoulders or under the arms of the women whom they thus held before them.
Then I prepared myself within, putting myself in a posture of defence: I loaded all my cannon, as I called them, that is to say, my muskets, which were mounted upon my new fortification, and all my pistols, and resolved to defend myself to the last gasp; not forgetting seriously to commend myself to the divine protection, and earnestly to pray to God to deliver me out of the hands of the barbarians.
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