Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/357



was busy tying a strip of linen skirt into a cap for McKinnon's head, to protect him from the sun, when the firing began again.

It was not general, at first. It was more the spasmodic and desultory pizzicato of sound which foretells the readiness of the waiting orchestra. It began quietly, as a storm begins, yet there seemed little that was ominous about it. The listening girl wondered, as De Brigard's outposts worked their way closer and closer in towards the creek-bed, if she had not become half -inured to the tumult of musketry.

McKinnon, watching at the embrasure, conceded them any territory that lay beyond the creek-brink. It was wasting time and powder, he knew, to attempt to hold them back from that little stream-bottom. He only too poignantly realised the limitations of his short-barrelled rifles of "Belgian Damascus." He was not altogether unfamiliar with that particular make