‘You’re quite right, Mr Fisher,’ I said. ‘But don’t forget I still have the pistol, even if I haven’t the shells. The first man who tries to come up here will have a headache tomorrow.’
‘I shouldn’t bank on it, sonny. Come along, kiddo! You’re done. Be good, and own it. We can’t wait much longer.’
‘You’ll have to try.’
Buck’s voice broke in on the discussion, quite unintelligible except that it was obviously wrathful.
‘Oh well!’ I heard Sam say resignedly, and then there was silence again below.
I resumed my watch over the trap-door, encouraged. This parleying, I thought, was an admission of failure on the part of the besiegers. I did not credit Sam with a real concern for my welfare–thereby doing him an injustice. I can see now that he spoke perfectly sincerely. The position, though I was unaware of it, really was hopeless, for the reason that, like most positions, it had a flank as well as a front. In estimating the possibilities of attack, I had figured assaults as coming only from below. I had omitted from my calculations the fact that the loft had a roof.
It was a scraping on the tiles above my head that first brought the new danger-point to my notice. There followed the sound of heavy hammering, and with it came a sickening realization of the truth of what Sam had said. We were beaten.
I was too paralysed by the unexpectedness of the attack to form any plan; and, indeed, I do not think that there was anything that I could have done. I was unarmed and helpless. I stood there, waiting for the inevitable.
Affairs moved swiftly. Plaster rained down on to the wooden floor. I was vaguely aware that the Nugget was speaking, but I did not listen to him.
A gap appeared in the roof and widened. I could hear the heavy breathing of the man as he wrenched at the tiles.
And then the climax arrived, with anticlimax following so swiftly upon it that the two were almost simultaneous. I saw the worker on the roof cautiously poise himself in the opening, hunched up like some strange ape. The next moment he had sprung.
As his feet touched the floor there came a rending, splintering crash; the air was filled with a choking dust, and he was gone. The old worn out boards had shaken under my tread. They had given way in complete ruin beneath this sharp onslaught. The rays of the lamp, which had filtered in like pencils of light through crevices, now shone in a great lake in the centre of the floor.
In the stable below all was confusion. Everybody was speaking at once. The hero of the late disaster was groaning horribly, for which he certainly had good reason: I did not know the extent of his injuries, but a man does not do that sort of thing with impunity. The next of the strange happenings of the night now occurred.
I had not been giving the Nugget a great deal of my attention for some time, other and more urgent matters occupying me.
His action at this juncture, consequently, came as a complete and crushing surprise.
I was edging my way cautiously towards the jagged hole in the centre of the floor, in the hope of seeing something of what was going on below, when from close beside me his voice screamed. ‘It’s me, Ogden Ford. I’m coming!’ and, without further warning, he ran to the hole, swung himself over, and dropped.
Manna falling from the skies in the wilderness never received a more whole-hearted welcome. Howls and cheers and ear-splitting whoops filled the air. The babel of talk broke out again. Some exuberant person found expression of his joy in emptying his pistol at the ceiling, to my acute discomfort, the spot he had selected as a target chancing to be within a foot of where I stood. Then they moved off in a body, still cheering. The fight was over.
I do not know how long it was before I spoke. It may have been some minutes. I was dazed with the swiftness with which the final stages of the drama had been played out. If I had given him more of my attention, I might have divined that Ogden had been waiting his opportunity to make some such move; but, as it was, the possibility had not even occurred to me, and I was stunned.