"... You think you can deal with these creatures? That they will take a couple of human souls and go? They are not after us. What they want is the war, the fighting, the bloodshed. It's their pleasure, their sport, their ideal."
Motta shouted: "This is militaristic propaganda, the thing we fled Earth to escape! Psychology has proved that there's no combative instinct!"
"You don't believe me?" continued Adrienne. "Ask Jules Egli if there haven't been peoples like that on Earth; he knows terran history. You have a choice, not of giving us up or retaining us, but of fighting or being killed ... Motta is no good for leading a war. He knows nothing of it, and it's against his principles. Choose another leader, one who knows about such things, one who has already shown the greatest address, audacity, intrepidity, and ingenuity in such ardent matters. Make him your general ..."
When I realized she was pointing at me, I was so embarrassed that if there hadn't been a crowd all round me I should have sneaked off and hidden. Next thing I knew, the Passivists were slapping my back, making burlesque salutes, and asking for orders, while Motta screamed about unconstitutionality and burst into tears.
A couple of other Passivists got up and started to make speeches too. I saw that they would go on orating until the Cimbrians came, under the impression that, if only they talked big enough, the nasty part of warfare would take care of itself. I dragged Adrienne, Carl Adorn, Maximilian Wyss, and the man who made my spear out of the crowd and asked them into the guest house. It was empty.
"Where's Ramaswami?" I asked.
Wyss said: "The tender is up making contact with your mothership. It will return in five or six days."
"Pest!" I said. "I might have talked Kubala into lending us a machine gun. Well, let's see what we have."
Four days later I had the quaintest army you ever saw. At that, I could never have done as much as I did if it hadn't been for the length of the Turanian days. There were about fifty warriors armed with improvised weapons. There were spears like the one I had taken to the Cimbrian camp, axes, hammers, clubs, wrenches, knives, and a couple of swords converted from scythe-blades. For defence I had all the women making wicker shields, two and a half feet square, with rope handles, from those reeds north of the village.
I nearly went crazy trying to keep the Libertéans' minds on their duties. The minute I took my eyes off them they would start speech-making or wandering off to loaf or take care of their own business.
By the fourth day I was none too popular. The people grumbled that the Cimbrians weren't coming after all and all this drilling and arming was a waste of time. They called me a dictator and a Napoleon. A few days more, and Motta could have staged a counter-revolution. I sent a messenger to Vaud on Nouvelle-Arcadie, asking for help, but the messenger never came back.
On the fourth day, some of my fighters were throwing spears while others marched up and down the village and pretended to charge and retreat. I still didn't know how to cope with the Cimbrians' firearms. My best plan was to hold everybody behind the inner stockade while I shot our two muskets. If the Cimbrians tried to climb this wall, my people could knock them off as they came without much exposing themselves. I was worrying about these things when the lookout called down:
"Holà! Monsieur Fay! They issue from the woods!"
I banged the dinner-gong. The people in the fields ran for the inner stockade. The confusion was indescribable.
"They have climbed the outer palisade!" called the lookout. A minute later there was a crackle of shots. The lookout fell off his platform into the middle of the street.
The Passivists wailed: "Oh, this is terrible!"
"We shall never succeed against these beasts with their fearful guns!"
"What unhappiness! We are already beaten!"
"Adrienne!" I yelled. "Egli! Where are you?"
I gathered up my two muskets and ran to the east side of the village. I climbed up on the step and fired one gun at the oncoming Cimbrians. Then I ducked down, ran a few paces along the step, and fired the other. This was to make them think we had more than one rifleman.
The last of the Passivists reached the east gate, which was slammed in the faces of the Cimbrians. My two loaders, Adrienne and Jules Egli, found me. I already had one gun nearly reloaded and presently fired at the Cimbrians from close range. This time, when the smoke cleared away, I had the satisfaction of seeing a Cimbrian lying on the ground. Others were trying to boost one of their number over the stockade. I ran to the place and hit the Cimbrian over the head as he came up. Then my helpers handed me another loaded gun.
My officers had got the army into order and put them on the stockade. Relying on surprise, the Cimbrians hadn't brought any scaling ladders or other siege tools. They'd come damned close to success, too. Now they ran up and down outside the stockade, shooting when they saw the top of somebody's head.
After I had laid out another with a musket shot, their leaders called them back. Carrying their dead and wounded, they trailed out through the outer gate and into the woods, all but a few who sat down with their backs to the outer wall. They were too far to hit with these short guns but near enough to watch us.
As the day wore on, we heard sounds of carpentry from the woods. When nobody would climb the sentry tower again, because of what happened to the first lookout, I went up it myself.
The Cimbrians were making equipment. I couldn't see details under the, shadow of the trees, but I could imagine scaling ladders, battering rams, mantlets, and torches to throw into the village. Once they got in, I wouldn't have given a brass farthing for my Utopians' chances. Though a sensible folk in most ways, the Arcadians were so unused to war that the thought of it made them as mercurial as children.
I called a council of war in the guest house. The day was hot and sticky, so we sweated even in our nudity. Adrienne said:
"How about an attack, to scatter them now while they make their ladders?"
Adorn shook his head. "One good discharge and our people would flee all the length of the way to Nouvelle-Arcadie."
"But it takes them time to charge their guns, the same as us," she insisted. "Once the first salvo is pulled, we could close before they could fire another. And the Cimbrians don't have those — what are those little pikes they used to put on the ends of guns?" she asked me.
"Bayonets?"
"Exactly. So when we came to hands, they would have nothing to fight with but clumsy clubs."
Fankhauser, the knife maker, said: "No, when our people see half their number lying in their blood, they will not think of that any more. Even if they did, the Cimbrians need not shoot all their guns the first time. They could reserve some for a second discharge."
"Well," said Adorn, "we can't wait for them to batter down our poor little wall and troop in."
"How many could the boats carry?" I asked, pretty much in despair myself.
Adorn said: "Perhaps sixty, if they are crowded in, in one voyage. We might evacuate the infants to Nouvelle-Arcadie, but we should have to detach some of our combatants to paddle."
"The women could paddle," said Wyss.
Adrienne said: "Too late for that. The Cimbrians could catch them between here and the beach. Gerald, my old, how many more gun shots have you?"
I thought. "Perhaps twenty, if I don't stop a bullet myself."
"And if it doesn't rain and get your powder wet." She turned to Wyss. "What about that? Is it likely to rain?"