“No good rushing that!” I said. “Roll out of it!”
I set the example by revolving toward the back of the building we had just left.
The man at the gun sprinkled the beach, but sprinkled it at random, his eyes no doubt spoiled for night-seeing by the flash of his gun.
Around the corner of the building, we sat up.
“You saved my life by tripping me,” the lad said coolly.
“Yes. I wonder if they’ve moved the machine gun from the street, or if—”
The answer to that came immediately. The machine gun in the street mingled its vicious voice with the drumming of the one in the boat.
“A pair of them!” I complained. “Know anything about the layout?”
“I don’t think there are more than ten or twelve of them,” he said, “although it is not easy to count in the dark. The few I have seen are completely masked—like the man in the boat. They seem to have disconnected the telephone and light lines first and then to have destroyed the bridge. We attacked them while they were looting the bank, but in front they had a machine gun mounted in an automobile, and we were not equipped to combat on equal terms.”
“Where are the islanders now?”
“Scattered, and most of them in hiding, I fancy, unless General Pleshskev has succeeded in rallying them again.”