At the same moment Diggle, attacked by the serang, was thrown from his perch on the hackeri and fell among his followers outside the barricade.  There was a moment’s lull while both parties recovered their wind.  Firing had ceased; to load a matchlock was a long affair, and though the attackers might have divided and come forward in relays with loaded weapons, they would have run the risk of hitting their own friends.

It was to be again a hand-to-hand fight.  Diggle was not to be denied.  Desmond, who had jumped down inside the barricade when the pressure was relieved by Bulger, could not but admire the spirit and determination of his old enemy, though it boded ill for his own chance of escape.  He was weary; worn out by want of rest and food; almost prostrated by the terrible heat.  Looking round his little fort, he felt a tremor as he saw that five out of his twenty-four men were more or less disabled.  True, there were now more than a dozen of the enemy in the same or a worse plight; but they could afford their losses, and Desmond indeed wondered why Diggle did not sacrifice a few men in one fierce overwhelming onslaught.

“A hundred rupees to the man who kills the young sahib, two hundred to the man who takes him alive!” cried Diggle to his dusky followers, as though in answer to Desmond’s thought.

Then, turning to the discomfited crew of the Good intent, he said:  “Sure, my men, you will not be beaten by a boy and a one-armed man.  There’s a fortune for all of you in those carts.  At them again, my men; I’ll show you the way.”

He was as good as his word.  He snatched a long lathi from one of the Bengalis and rushed up the slope to the hackeri nearest the nullah.  Finding a purchase for one end of his club in the woodwork of the wagon, he put forth all his strength in the effort to push it over the edge.  Owing to the length of the lathi he was out of reach of the half pikes in the hands of the boatmen, who had to lunge either over or under the carts.

His unaided strength would have been unequal to the task of moving the hackeri, heavily laden as it was, resting on soft soil, and interlocked with the next.  But as soon as his followers saw the aim of his movements, and especially when they found that the defenders could not touch him without exposing themselves, he gained as many eager helpers as could bring their lathis to bear upon the two carts.

Meanwhile the defense at this spot was weak, for the men of the Good Intent had swarmed up to the adjoining carts and were threatening at any moment to force a way over the barricade.  They were more formidable enemies than the Bengalis.

Slowly the two hackeris began to move, till the wheels of one hung over the edge of the nullah.  One more united heave, and it rolled over, dragging the other cart with it and splitting itself into a hundred fragments on the rocky bottom.  Through the gap thus formed in the barricade sprang Diggle, with half a dozen men of the Good Intent and a score of Bengalis.