"I shall stick Mr. K. for a rise in screw if we get through this," said Carter.
"If I hadn't made a promise," said the girl, "I could tell you something about your Mr. K. that would startle you."
"You're a tantalizing baggage, and I've a good mind to pick you up and shake it out of you. Gad! Here they come. Now, I'll shoot, and you get a box of matches and light those bombs for White-Man's-Trouble to throw."
"Yes. You'd a big brazing-lamp in the factory. Remember it? Well, you had. And that meant benzoline, I guessed. I found a drum full of it, anyway, and I've loaded up those tins with benzoline. It'll burn like winking in this sun, and the niggers'll never see the flame. Only thing to take care of, is not to set light to the factory. Now, do you understand?"
"Savvy plenty. Oh, Carter, I burn my leg plenty-too-much with dem damhot lamp once on steamah. No can see flame when sun lib for shine. I fit for serve as stand-by-at-crane boy once, sar, on steamah."
"Well, Mr. Engineer, throw straight and don't get hoist by your own petard. By the living Jink we're in for it now. Throw, Trouble, for all you're worth, right into the blue of them."
The four-fifty repeater yap-yapped its messages, and the man who had learned to shoot quick and straight amongst the rabbits and grouse of Upper Wharfedale, made deadly practice at this bigger game. But two eight-shot Winchesters are of very little more value than catapults in stopping the rush of two hundred fighting black pagans officered by Moslemin Haûsas. Beforehand the fire of the Portuguese and the factory Krooboys had held them off, much more by its noise than its deadliness. The one solitary shooter who remained, they held in scorn; he was firing white powder in the Winchester, and the smallness of the noise and the absence of smoke encouraged them. They scorned to shoot at him with their flintlocks. They would rush in and put this man to the matchet, and save the girl alive. And thereafter, when they rolled the red head at King Kallee's feet, and made the girl stand up before him, many and fine presents would be given to gladden them and their women.
So they gave the Okky yell, and sprang out of the bush into the open, and rushed across the clearing.