“Moore, you hound,” cried a voice through the smoke of the furthest pile, “we have come for your new nigger.  Will you give him up or will you fight?”

Moore’s only reply was a bullet fired in the direction whence the voice was heard.  His shot was answered by a perfect volley from men who could just be discerned creeping through the grass about four hundred 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 were now running up at full speed and close to the walls of the house.  At that moment the door opened, and Moore, heading a