Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-bang! went half a dozen rifles.
Thank Heaven! not one of the Club, was struck. There were twenty scoundrels armed to the teeth.
The Doctor was as stiff as a rock. He aimed six times as calmly as though he were in a pistol-gallery. Nerve told. Six explosions roared. Six yells followed. Six men reeled.
"I'd give ten years of my life for such a pistol!" cried Buttons.
The Italians were staggered. Dick had a bowie-knife. The Senator grasped a ponderous beam that he had placed on the coach in case of another break-down. Mr. Figgs had a razor which he had grabbed from the storehouse in the Doctor's pocket. Buttons had nothing. But on the road lay three Italians writhing.
"Hurrah!" cried Buttons. "Load again, Doctor. Come; let's make a rush and get these devils on the road."
He rushed forward. The others all at his side. The Italians stood paralyzed at the effect of the revolver. As Buttons led the charge they fell back a few paces.
"Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" burst Buttons, the Senator, and Dick, as each snatched a rifle from the prostrate bandits, and hastily tore the cartridge-boxes from them.
"Load up! load up! Doctor!" cried Buttons.
"All right,"' said the Doctor, who never changed in his cool self-possession.
But now the Italians with curses and screams came back to the attack. It is absolutely stupefying to think how few shots hit the mark in the excitement of a fight. Here were a number of men firing from a distance of hardly more than forty paces, and not one took effect.
The next moment the whole crowd were upon them. Buttons snatched Mr. Figgs's razor from his grasp and used it vigorously. Dick plied his bowie-knife. The Senator wielded a clubbed rifle on high as though it were a wand, and dealt the blows of a giant upon the heads of his assailants. All the Italians were physically their inferiors--small, puny men. Mr. Figgs made a wild dash at the first man he saw and seized his rifle. The fight was spirited.
The rascally brigands were nearly three times as numerous, but the Americans surpassed them in bodily strength and spirit.
Crash--crash--fell the Senator's rifle, and down went two men. His strength was enormous--absorbed as it had been from the granite cliffs of the old Granite State. Two brawny fellows seized him from behind. A thrust of his elbow laid one low. Buttons slashed the wrist of the other. A fellow threw himself on Buttons. Dick's bowie-knife laid open his arm and thigh. The next moment Dick went down beneath the blows of several Italians. But Buttons rushed with his razor to rescue Dick. Three men glared at him with uplifted weapons. Down came the Senator's clubbed rifle like an avalanche, sweeping their weapons over the cliff. They turned simultaneously on the Senator, and grasped him in a threefold embrace. Buttons's razor again drank blood. Two turned upon him. Bang! went the Doctor's pistol, sending one of them shrieking to the ground. Bang! Once more, and a fellow who had nearly overpowered the breathless Figgs staggered back. Dick was writhing on the ground beneath the weight of a dead man and a fellow who was trying to suffocate him. Buttons was being throttled by three others who held him powerless, his razor being broken. A crack on Mr. Figgs's head laid him low. The Doctor stood off at a little distance hastily reloading.