‘They’ll make a good fight of it when the swaddies do come,’ he said cheerfully, as they settled down in their blankets.

‘My oath!’ replied Mike.  ’But we were chumps to give up our revolvers.  What good can a man do pokin’ round in the dark with a blanky spike?’

The men lay with their primitive weapons in their hands.  There was a little growling and cursing and once more the encampment was given over to sleep.

Jim Done awoke as the grayness of dawn was creeping through the night—­awoke with an idea that he was sleeping under the gum-trees.  There was a vague belief in his head that he and his mates were on the wallaby, but where they were going to, he was too sleepy to decide.  A slight drizzle was falling, but he curled himself in his blanket, and disposed himself to sleep again.  Then, with the shock of a heavy blow, he heard a sharp voice challenging.  A gunshot followed.

This time there was no mistake.  The men rushed to their positions, and the sudden confusion fell as suddenly into order.  Jim found himself standing with his column, his pike grasped firmly in two hands, without quite realizing how it had come about that he was there.  Mike was on his right; on his left was a little wild Irishman, and even in the intense excitement of that moment, when he could see the black line of infantry coming down upon them through the heavy dusk of early dawn, he marked the fierce, semi-conscious jabbering of the Paddy, with an inclination to laugh aloud.

‘Glory be, they’re comin’! they’re comin’! they’re comin’!  Plaze the pigs, I’ll have wan!  Jist wan ’ll satisfy me.  Blessed saints, make it the wan that shot O’Keif!  Och, they’re comin’, th’ darlin’s!  Hit home, Tim Canty, an’ Holy Mary make it the wan that shot Barty O’Keif!’

Jim’s eyes were fixed upon the dark mass charging the stockade.  The soldiers were now not more than sixty yards off, and he could see a horseman leading.  He heard the order to charge, and heard Lalor’s sharp, stern reply.  There followed a blast of rifles from the stockade, and the shadowy equestrian figure leading the Imperial infantry became blurred and broken in the dusk and the thin rain, and the riderless horse at the head of the column cantered on, and leapt into the stockade through the smoke.

‘First blood!’ muttered Mike, as the officer fell.

Finding the attack concentrated on one point of the stockade, Lalor gathered his handful of rifles here, and they met the charge of the regulars with another volley, checking their advance.  A volley from the carbines replied, and the lead whistled into the stockade.  A pikeman ran forward a few steps, plunged on his face at Jim’s feet, and lay still.

‘Holy Mother, if I can git wan iv them I’ll be content—­almost!’ continued the little Irishman in his fierce monologue.