Page:Adventures of Kimble Bent.djvu/231

Rh whom he awakened. "The soldiers are on us! They are by now entering the clearing. Get your arms quickly! Man the trenches! But don't make a sound!"

The fighting-men poured out of their sleeping huts, snatching up their weapons and accoutrements, and ran to their places in the pits and ditches behind the stockade. They hastily loaded their tuparas, their rifles, and their carbines, and, peering eagerly through the defence-works, sought to penetrate the raw, damp morning mist that shrouded their front.

The whole bush-castle was alive and ready. Every man and boy who could shoulder a gun was in the well-hidden firing lines.

The wet mist slightly lifting as the morning light came, the musketeers presently saw dim figures moving out from the dark forest on their front and right and left flanks. Moving quickly, half running, in a cautious, crouching gait, they flitted from tree to tree, and burnt stump to stump, and nearer and nearer to the stockade.

Not a sound came from the breathlessly waiting warriors, nor from the ghost-like figures that now sank to the ground, each behind a log or a great blackened stump, or the butt of a standing tree.

Gun in hand, finger on the trigger, the Hauhaus waited.

The apparitions were picked bush-fighters of the