ed yards
out. The bullets rattled harmlessly against wooden walls and iron
shutters, or came with a thud against the mattress fortifications of the
verandah. The firing was all directed against the front of the house.

"I see their game," said Moore. "The front attack is only a feint. When
they think we are all busy here, another detachment will try to rush the
place from the back and to set fire to the building. We'll 'give them
their kail through the reek.'"

Moore's dispositions were quickly made. He left me with some ten of the
blacks to keep up as heavy a fire as possible from the roof against the
advancing skirmishers. He posted himself, with six fellows on whom he
could depend, in a room of one of the wings which commanded the back
entrance. As many men, with plenty of ready-loaded rifles, were told off
to a room in the opposite wing. Both parties were thus in a position to
rake the entrance with a cross fire. Moore gave orders that not a
trigger should be pulled till the still invisible assailants had arrived
on his side, between the two projecting wings. "Then fire into them, and
let every one choose his man."

On the roof our business was simple enough. We lay behind bags of
cotton, firing as rapidly and making as much show of force as possible,
while women kept loading for us. Our position was extremely strong, as
we were quite invisible to men crouching or running hurriedly far below.
Our practice was not particularly good; still three or four of the
skirmishers had ceased to advance, and this naturally discouraged the
others, who were aware, of course, that their movement was only a feint.
The siege had now lasted about half an hour, and I had begun to fancy
that Moore's theory of the attack was a mistake, and that he had credited
the enemy with more generalship than they possessed, when a perfect storm
of fire broke out beneath us, from the rooms where Moore and his company
were posted. Dangerous as it was to cease for a moment from watching the
enemy, I stole across the roof, and, looking down between two of the
cotton bags which filled the open spaces of the balustrades, I saw the
narrow ground between the two wings simply strewn with dead or wounded
men. The cross fire still poured from the windows, though here and there
a marksman tried to pick off the fugitives. Rapidly did I cross the roof
to my post. To my horror the skirmishers had advanced, as if at the
signal of the firing, and