“Blockheads! cowards!” shouted Diggle in a fury.  “Push on, you dogs; we are four to one!”

He was now a very different Diggle from the man Desmond had known hitherto.  His smile was gone; all languor and indolence was lost; his eyes flashed, his lips met in a hard cruel line; his voice rang out strong and metallic.  That he was no coward Desmond already knew.  He put himself in the forefront of the line, and, as always happens, a brave leader never lacks followers.

The whole of the seamen and many of the Bengalis surged forward after him.  Behind the breastwork all the men were now mixed up—­musketeers with pikemen and lathiwallahs.  Upon these came the swarming enemy, some clambering over the carts, others wriggling between the wheels.  There was a babel of cries; the exultant bellow of the born fighter, British or native; a few pistol shots; the scream of the men mortally hit; the “Wah! wah!” of the Bengalis applauding their own prowess.

As Diggle had said, the odds were four to one.  But the defenders had the advantage of position, and for a few moments they held the yelling mob at bay.  The half pikes of the boatmen were terrible weapons at close quarters, more formidable than the cutlasses of the seamen balked by the breastwork, or the loaded bamboo clubs of the lathiwallahs.

Sunman, the mate, was one of the first victims; he fell to a shot from Bulger.  But Parmiter and Diggle, followed by half a dozen of the sailors, and a score of the more determined lathiwallahs and musketeers with clubbed muskets, succeeded in clambering to the top of the carts and prepared to jump down among the defenders, most of whom were busily engaged in jabbing at the men swarming in between the wheels.  Desmond saw that if his barricade was once broken through the issue of the fight must be decided by mere weight of numbers.

“Bulger, here!” he cried, “and you, Hossain.”

The men sprang to him, and, following his example, leaped on to the cart next to that occupied by Diggle and Parmiter.  Desmond’s intention was to take them in flank.  Jumping over the bales of silk, he swung over his head a matchlock he had seized from one of his peons, and brought it down with a horizontal sweep.  Two of the Bengalis among the crowd of lathiwallahs, who were hanging back out of reach of the boatmen’s pikes, were swept off the cart.  But the violence of his blow disturbed Desmond’s own balance; he fell on one knee; his matchlock was seized and jerked out of his hand; and in a second three men were upon him.  Bulger and the serang, although a little late, owing 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.