She stood still, listening. The rattle
of pistol fire three floors below continued in fits and starts, but the
sound of it was oddly unreal, resembling more stammering explosions of a
string of firecrackers than snaps of the whiplash of Death.
She tried one of the windows without encouragement, but at the other found
a board with a loose end, which she pried aside, till through begrimed
glass she could see a ghastly, weeping sky of daybreak and, by craning her
neck, peer down into the dark gully of the street.
At first she thought it empty; but presently her straining vision made out
two huddled shapes upon the farther sidewalk, close under the walls of a
public house whose sign she could just barely decipher: the Red Moon.
Then, about to draw back from the window, she saw five men, oddly
foreshortened figures from that lofty coign of view, leave the Red Moon by
one of its bar entrances, bearing between them a heavy beam of wood, and
with this improvised battering-ram aimed at the door to the besieged house,
charge awkwardly across the cobbles.
The house spat fire from door and windows, a withering blast. In the middle
of the street the beam was abandoned, three of its fool-hardy bearers took
to their heels, each shaping an individual course, while one lay still upon
the wet black stones, and another, apparently wounded in the legs, sought
pitifully to drag himself by his arms, inch by inch, out of the zone of
fire. But presently his efforts grew feeble, then he, too, lay stirless,
prone in the sluicing rain.
Pages:
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256