Page:Randall Parrish - The Red Mist.djvu/371

 Rh  in the lurid light of the guns. The whole interior of the church blazed and echoed, the smoke choking us with its fumes, the noise stunning our ears. I heard the chug of bullets flattening against the logs, smothered oaths, the crash of an overturned bench, a scream as shrill as a woman's that made my heart leap, and Harwood's voice calling out the same word again and again. But although I heard all this, I hardly knew it, my whole thought rivetted on those black figures in front of me—those reckless devils we had to kill, or drive back. And we did it! From every window, from every hastily smashed pane beside the door, we poured our fire—the carbines spitting into the dark, their sharp barking incessant. Barrels grew hot, the smoke drove back choking into our faces, but we pulled triggers, aiming as best we could in the moon-gleam, now changed to a red mist. They stopped; hung for a moment motionless, the ground dotted with the dead; then tried again. There was a roar of musketry, the crack of rifles; bullets chugged into the logs, and came crashing through the windows. Glass showered upon us, and the man next me went over like a log; someone struck me across the face with a bloody hand, and a shot splintered the stock of my gun, numbing my arm to the shoulder. I gripped another weapon out of the stiffening fingers of the man on the floor,