spoiled!

"Stay a moment," said Sergeant Drooce, when I had told him, without
causing a movement in a muscle of his face: "look to your pouch, my lad.
You Tom Packer, look to your pouch, confound you! Look to your pouches,
all you Marines."

The same artful savage had got at them, somehow or another, and the
cartridges were all unserviceable. "Hum!" says the Sergeant. "Look to
your loading, men. You are right so far?"

Yes; we were right so far.

"Well, my lads, and gentlemen all," says the Sergeant, "this will be a
hand-to-hand affair, and so much the better."

He treated himself to a pinch of snuff, and stood up, square-shouldered
and broad-chested, in the light of the moon--which was now very bright--as
cool as if he was waiting for a play to begin. He stood quiet, and we
all stood quiet, for a matter of something like half-an-hour. I took
notice from such whispered talk as there was, how little we that the
silver did not belong to, thought about it, and how much the people that
it did belong to, thought about it. At the end of the half-hour, it was
reported from the gate that Charker and the two were falling back on us,
pursued by about a dozen.

"Sally! Gate-party, under Gill Davis," says the Sergeant, "and bring 'em
in! Like men, now!"

We were not long about it, and we brought them in. "Don't take me," says
Charker, holding me round the neck, and stumbling down at my feet when
the gate was fast, "don't take me near the ladies or the children, Gill.
They had better not see Death, till it can't be helped. They'll see it
soon enough."

"Harry!" I answered, holding up his head. "Comrade!"

He was cut to pieces. The signal had been secured by the first pirate
party that landed; his hair was all singed off, and his face was
blackened with the running pitch from a torch.

He made no complaint of pain, or of anything. "Good-bye, old chap," was
all he said, with a smile. "I've got my death. And Death ain't life. Is
it, Gill?"

Having helped to lay his poor body on one side, I went back to my post.
Sergeant Drooce looked at me, with his eyebrows a little lifted. I
nodded. "Close up here men, and gentlemen all!" said the Sergeant. "A
place too many, in the line."

The Pirates were so close upon us at this time, that the foremost of them
were already before the gate. More and more came up with a great noise,
and shouting loudly. When we believed from the sound that they were all
there,