"It's probable," he said. "We have had a real drouth: five days without one drop."
Adrienne and I stared at one another and both started to speak: "If we could wet their powder ..."
"So no guns at all would go off ..."
I said to Wyss: "Can you make a rain here? Now?"
"If I had my iodide generator. The humidity is high enough."
"Where is your apparatus? On the beach?"
"Alas, yes. And they could shoot me enroute. But I will take the chance if you wish." The little man looked unhappy, but it's been said that the true hero is he who goes ahead even when terrified.
I thought fast. Somebody should go to cover him. Adrienne and Egli and I knew how to load the muskets; Adrienne and I knew how to shoot, for I'd given her a little practice on the way to Liberté. I stood up and said:
"Come, my friend. We go to the beach. Adrienne, take this gun and cover us from the west gate. If I don't get back, you and Jules will have to man the artillery, and Carl shall be general."
"Oh, let me go instead," she said. "You're our best shooter as well as our commandant —"
"Orders are orders. Carl, get our infantry together and explain the plan. We hope to drench them and then charge them."
A vulgar American expression tells how scared I was inside. It shows what you'll do to look good in front of the girl you love.
It was a little before we reached Liberté that I had found I was in love with Adrienne. Of course I said nothing. I knew my faults too well to suppose I could attract such a girl, despite the demonstration in the Cimbrian camp. She had merely been glad to see another human being and would have kissed Louis Motta.
I had given hard thought to the matter, though. If I dared not speak my piece to Adrienne, I might quit my job and join the Arcadians to be near her and silently worship her.
This prospect was grim, for I had found why, despite the Arcadians' many virtues, I didn't really like the place. The village atmosphere reminded me of Scorpion Rock, Arizona, to which my father moved when ill-health made him retire from the managership of World News, and where I spent a miserable boyhood.
You see, my father is a very intellectual, sophisticated, internationalized man, and some of these attitudes rubbed off on me. The local folks in Scorpion Rock weren't. Hence the boys made life hell for me until I grew too big to be bullied. Give me a big anonymous city, where you needn't be sociable with anybody just because he lives near you.
With Adrienne posted at the west gate, Wyss and I scooted for the beach, crouching. We made it without being seen. Wyss read dials and diddled with gadgets while I lay in the sand at the upper edge of the beach, my musket pointing towards the side of Liberté from which the Cimbrians might come.
At last Wyss got his generator going. "Are you ready?" I whispered.
"Not quite. I must adjust ..."
"Holy name of a name! Hurry!"
"In a moment ..."
Bang!
The shot came, not from Liberté, but from my left rear, where the outer stockade ran down to the water. A Cimbrian had waded round the end; seeing us, he'd taken a quick shot, which missed. I rolled over and sat up. By the time I had my sights in line, the Cimbrian had slipped around the end of the stockade out of sight.
I jumped up and had started in that direction, when it occurred to me that the shot would bring the rest. I'd better get back to Liberté. Maximilian Wyss was already running like a rabbit.
I caught up with him halfway to the gate. We ran side by side. Then three Cimbrians appeared, running towards us through a melon patch.
"Drop flat!" I shouted to Wyss.
I did but he didn't. Two of their guns and mine went off at the same time. One of their group fell. So did Wyss.
The Cimbrian who had fired but had not been hit started to reload, while the one who had not fired ran towards me. The beastly thing about muzzle loaders is not only that it takes so long to load them, but also that you have to stand up to do so. There I was, lying in the dirt with an empty flintlock while this fellow trotted up to put a ball through me at spitting range.
Bang! A puff of smoke from the gate, and the running Cimbrian spun round with a screech and fell.
I jumped up, gathered Wyss up under one arm, and ran for the gate. Beef sometimes has advantages. More Cimbrians appeared. There were several shots, but all passed safely aft of me.
Inside, Adrienne was reloading like mad, her eyes shining. "Is the poor little Wyss dead?" she said.
"Indeed not, young lady," said Wyss in a muffled voice. "I am wounded in the leg, and if it is not repaired I shall bleed to death. But I give you your rain."
I turned Wyss over to the women. Adorn had collected the men by the east gate. Adrienne cried:
"Gerald! Regard the beach!"
A cluster of Cimbrians was standing round the meteorological apparatus, I suppose trying to figure out what we had been up to.
It was a long shot, but I rested the barrel on the top of the stockade and squeezed it off. When the smoke cleared, the Cimbrians were scattering, but one had knocked over the stand on which the generator stood. We groaned.
Somebody shouted to come to the east side. I went. Cimbrians were pouring through the gate in the outer stockade, carrying ladders, a ram made of a trunk with the branches trimmed to stubs for handles, and other siege gear. Adrienne and I began shooting into them, but they shot back so that we could barely duck down after each shot to avoid being riddled.
On they came. Carl Adorn detached a few men to take care of scaling ladders; I pushed one ladder over backwards with a gun-butt. The ram hit the gate with a boom and a cracking of strained wood.
There came another boom — but this wasn't the ram; it was thunder. A drop hit my hand. A thundercloud had formed over the village.
In five seconds, the rain came down with a roar. There were a couple more shots from the Cimbrians, and the damp sput of misfires.
I jumped down and ran to the east gate, which still bulged and shook from the blows of the ram. I said: "Carl, help me pull back this bolt!"
The big timber that held the gate closed was cracked and bent from the blows so that it wouldn't move. While we struggled with it, the ram struck again, boom! The gate flew open, sagging on shattered hinges. Adorn and I leaped back. The momentum of the ram carried the front end of it into the village.
I stepped forward, grabbed the stub-end of a branch, and pulled the tree trunk inward, the way it was going. There was only one of me to twenty Cimbrians, but they're lightly built and weren't expecting a pull in that direction. The whole double string of them, ten on a side, came staggering into Liberté before they had the sense to let go.
I picked up my musket and began whacking them with the butt. The Passivists swarmed about with hammers and hatchets. In ten seconds the Cimbrians were all either down or fled.
We crowded through the gate and fell upon the Cimbrians outside. There wasn't any formal charge, just a brawl; forty-odd naked men, slipping and scrambling, with mud and blood running off them in the rain, tearing into sixty or seventy Cimbrians with their hair plastered in clumps by the wet.
I slugged with my gun butt until the stock broke. Then I picked up a dropped shield and kept on swinging the musket barrel. Even such a simple defence as a wicker shield gives a big advantage over somebody who has none. The Cimbrians wielded gun butts, knives, and hatchets, but to less effect than we did.
The Cimbrians began falling back towards the outer gate. They got jammed going through it, and we hacked and hammered and thrust and stabbed until we won through the gate over a carpet of fallen Cimbrians.
"Keep after them!" I shouted in a hoarse croak. I must have been yelling all the time. "Don't let them make a stand!"