d to get behind
this barrel, where he was safe from being hit as long as he kept well
behind it. Then he peppered away, right and left.

On the left of the verandah there was a door stood partly open,
and after a bit a man in a light overcoat and a white hat, like Mr.
Knightley always wore, showed himself for a second. Daly raps away at
this, and the man staggers and falls. Patsey shows himself for a moment
from behind the cask, thinking to make a rush forward; that minute Mr.
Knightley, who was watching him from a window (the other was only an
image), lets drive at him, cool and steady, and poor Patsey drops like a
cock, and never raised his head again. He was shot through the body. He
lingered a bit; but in less than an hour he was a dead man.

We began to think at last that we had got in for a hot thing, and
that we should have to drop it like Moran's mob at Kadombla. However,
Starlight was one of those men that won't be beat, and he kept getting
more and more determined to score. He crept away to the back of the
building, where he could see to fire at a top window close by where the
doctor and Mr. Knightley had been potting at us.

He had the repeating rifle he'd won from me; he never let it go
afterwards, and he could make wonderful shooting with it. He kept it
going so lively that they began to be hard pressed inside, and had to
fire away twice as much ammunition as they otherwise would. It always
beat me how they contrived to defend so many points at once. We tried
back and front, doors and windows. Twenty times we tried a rush, but
they were always ready--so it seemed--and their fire was too hot for us
to stand up to, unless we wanted to lose every second man.

The shooting was very close. Nearly every one of us had a
scratch--Starlight rather the worst, as he was more in the front and
showed himself more. His left arm was bleeding pretty free, but he tied
a handkerchief over it and went on as if nothing had happened, only I
could see that his face had that set look he only got now and then, and
his eyes began to show out a fierce light.

At last we began to see that the return fire was slacking off, while
ours was as brisk as ever.

'Hurrah!' says Starlight, 'I believe they'll give in soon. If they had
any cartridges they would have had every man of us in that last rush.
Let's try another dodge. Here goes for a battering-ram, Dick!'

He pointed to a long, heavy sapling which had been fetched in for a
sl