"You're going to fight, you can't arrange it yourself. You got to do it like a gentleman."
Adam nodded slowly.
"I'll carry the bloody thing," said Boardman.
He was the oldest and after Adam, the best liked. He was less excitable than many, though he hated van Bramm with the most vehement of them. Adam looked into his seamed, rough face.
"Well, you know our terms, Sharpy. Nothing less."
"Nothing less."
They were down by the barricade now. Sharpy hoisted the flag, a square of exquisitely embroidered French linen nailed to a spar. Though certainly it could be seen from the van Bramm shack, there was no sound of acknowledgement.
"Any weapons or none. But it's to be to the death."
"To the death."
Holding the flag high above his head, Sharpy Boardman climbed a barrel to the top of the barricade.
There was a terrific burst of musketry. Sharpy spun completely around, as if he'd been hit by a club, and fell right back to the place he'd just quitted, by Adam's side. He landed on his back.
Adam looked down at him. The lower jaw was broken and hung crazily awry. Another ball had smashed the left cheekbone. The body, hit in six or seven places, was just beginning to bleed, the blood rising sluggishly, soaking the coat.
"So there's our answer," muttered Adam.
He drew.
"Well, come on, ye heefwits! D'ye want to live forever?"
He sprang over the barricade.
He could hear his own feet strike the hard earth as he ran. He didn't know whether anybody was following.
They'd blasted at the first man who showed himself, and now they were frantically reloading—pouring the powder, ramming the cut bullets home, stuffing in the wads, priming.
It is always good to learn that your enemy's a fool.
Adam ran on.
There was a sound like that of two boards being clapped together from his right—that is, from the warehouse—and then there was another. Something touched him on the top of his right shoulder.
He heard a shout behind him. Now they were coming! There was a good deal of that clapping sound. Adam reached the door of the shack.
This was a real door, but it was not a good one, not strong. Adam had no doubt that he could smash it, but he didn't know what to do when he had. They'd be in the dark, in there, while he would be framed against the drizzle of dawn.
He threw himself upon the door, and so flimsy was it that he thought for a moment that it would go slamming in, himself on top. He backed away. He kicked it twice, hard. The second kick tore the hinges out, but it also caused Adam to stagger back. He caught himself. He faced an open space now, a rectangle of blackness.
What he did then he did without thinking. He dived in head-first-leaving his feet, flinging himself full-length.
There was a great shattering explosion that seemed to take place right on top of his head, and then he was on the floor scrabbling among the legs of stools and tables he couldn't see. Something slished the air close to his face—a knife? a saber?—and he rolled away from that. He'd worked his own sheath knife out.
Rolling, he struck somebody's legs. He threw both arms around these, and the man fell hard, cursing. Perhaps because the breath had been knocked out of him, he didn't start to struggle; but Adam took no chances, and used his knife several times.
He got to his knees, then to his feet.
Through the doorway he could see his men coming now. They were about halfway from the barricade. That's how fast everything had happened.
Then he found himself on hands and knees again. It was curious.
He didn't know he'd been hit, yet it seemed unlikely that he had fainted.
He could have lost consciousness only for a second. When he looked up again, the men were bursting through the doorway.
Something fell on him.
Next thing he knew was smoke. It stung his eyes and scraped his throat. It prickled the inside of his nose. Shaking his head, weeping, he started for the doorway.
"There's another one of the rats!"
"No, no!" he cried.
"My God, it's Captain Long!"
They hauled him out, forbearing to carry him lest they lose too much time. Near the door he bumped a corpse. It was like two tenders, moored side by side, bumping in the wash of a vessel that had passed nearby. The corpse had no weapon. Its face was all blood and blackened flesh. Its pockets had been turned inside-out.
Down the beach a little, out of musketshot, they paused to survey the situation. Foureau gave Adam a few gulps of rum, which helped.
The sparks rose straight and swift, in a fixed column, to a point about twenty feet above the van Bramm shack, and there they broke ranks to swoop and swing inland with the joyous abandon of children bursting out of school. The flames crackled and spat.
Van Bramm and his followers must have taken refuge in the warehouse. This was not an unexpected move, the warehouse being a structure firmly built of real timber, the only one of its sort on the island. The surprise lay in the fact that they had not clung to the shack, if only for comfort's sake, at least for a while, keeping the warehouse as a last resort. Instead, van Bramm appeared to have left no more than a forlorn hope in the shack, thinking perhaps to enfilade the attackers from the shelter of the warehouse, if the first charge was broken, but making sure all the same that arrangements to fire the smaller building were complete.
There had only been four men in that shack, Foureau averred. They were still there.
"You're sure they're dead?"
"They're dead all right."
The transfer to the bigger, stronger building had been made at night, of course, in order that it should not be observed and taken as a sign of weakness. With the shack leveled, there would be no cover from behind which to attack the warehouse.
"Change of wind," somebody muttered, "and the big un'd go, too."
Well, that was not likely. These were the trades. The thought, however, rendered them a dab grim. The warehouse was anything but fireproof. It boasted the only non-canvas roof on Providence, but that roof was made of cedar shingles, which would go up like paper. The ware-house, too, contained the colony's magazine, which was not sheathed in metal. There were three tons of gunpowder in that magazine.
They watched the fire, not knowing what to do next. Only a little further down the beach—there wasn't room between the two buildings to work even a small battering-ram—was the door of the warehouse. This was the only door, and there were no windows.
The sparks leapt straight, and broke, and went rollicking across the island. There was a great deal of smoke. One wall of the blazing shack fell in, then another. The sparks were redoubled.
"We could make out to try to force the door and then one man slip around back and toss a torch up on the roof," Foureau said slowly, thoughtfully. "That'd flush 'em!"
Adam's blood ran cold at the thought; but the pirates seized the suggestion with whoops of delight. It was the sort of thing that appealed to them—bold, noisy, spectacular, superlatively stupid, and cruel. Each could picture in his imagination the van Bramm men rushing out of the warehouse—for they wouldn't dare stay there when it was afire—and one by one getting picked off. It would be a grand sight, and sport. Clamorous, they were for starting this; but Adam rose.
"Ye fools! Where would you get the timber for another building like that? It'd use up in one big poof nine-tenths of the gunpowder on this island, so how could you go adventuring again—or even put up a fight if some Navy ship comes along?"
It swayed them. They wavered.
"What's more," Adam pursued, "it would ruin most of the treasure. That's yours. You've all got shares in it, you've worked for it and fought for it. And maybe there's a lot more than you think? Who's been checking van Bramm's accounts all these months?"