to want of agility in scaling the
cart, were close behind.

"Belay there!" roared Bulger, as he flung himself upon the combatants.

The bullet head of one sturdy badmash cracked like an eggshell under the
butt of the bold tar's musket; a second received the terrible hook square
in the teeth; and a third, no other than Parmiter himself, was caught
round the neck at the next lunge of the hook, and flung, with a mighty
heave, full into the midst of the defenders. Bulger drew a long breath.

At the same moment Diggle, attacked by the serang, was thrown from his
perch on the hackeri and fell among his followers outside the barricade.
There was a moment's lull while both parties recovered their wind. Firing
had ceased; to load a matchlock was a long affair, and though the
attackers might have divided and come forward in relays with loaded
weapons, they would have run the risk of hitting their own friends.

It was to be again a hand-to-hand fight. Diggle was not to be denied.
Desmond, who had jumped down inside the barricade when the pressure was
relieved by Bulger, could not but admire the spirit and determination of
his old enemy, though it boded ill for his own chance of escape. He was
weary; worn out by want of rest and food; almost prostrated by the
terrible heat. Looking round his little fort, he felt a tremor as he saw
that five out of his twenty-four men were more or less disabled. True,
there were now more than a dozen of the enemy in the same or a worse
plight; but they could afford their losses, and Desmond indeed wondered
why Diggle did not sacrifice a few men in one fierce overwhelming
onslaught.

"A hundred rupees to the man who kills the young sahib, two hundred to
the man who takes him alive!" cried Diggle to his dusky followers, as
though in answer to Desmond's thought.

Then, turning to the discomfited crew of the Good intent, he said: "Sure,
my men, you will not be beaten by a boy and a one-armed man. There's a
fortune for all of you in those carts. At them again, my men; I'll show
you the way."

He was as good as his word. He snatched a long lathi from one of the
Bengalis and rushed up the slope to the hackeri nearest the nullah.
Finding a purchase for one end of his club in the woodwork of the wagon,
he put forth all his strength in the effort to push it over the edge.
Owing to the length of the lathi he was out of reach of the half pikes in
the hands of the boatmen, who had to lunge either ove