I frowned and beat my brains together. You can’t fight machine guns and hand grenades with peaceful villagers and retired capitalists. No matter how well led and armed they are, you can’t do anything with them. For that matter, how could anybody do much against a game of that toughness?
“Suppose you stick here and keep your eye on the boat,” I suggested. “I’ll scout around and see what’s doing further up, and if I can get a few good men together, I’ll try to jump the boat again, probably from the other side. But we can’t count on that. The getaway will be by boat. We can count on that, and try to block it. If you lie down you can watch the boat around the corner of the building without making much of a target of yourself. I wouldn’t do anything to attract attention until the break for the boat comes. Then you can do all the shooting you want.”
“Excellent!” he said. “You’ll probably find most of the islanders up behind the church. You can get to it by going straight up the hill until you come to an iron fence, and then follow that to the right.”
“Right.”
I moved off in the direction he had indicated.
At the main street I stopped to look around before venturing across. Everything was quiet there. The only man I could see was spread out face-down on the sidewalk near me.
On hands and knees I crawled to his side. He was dead. I didn’t stop to examine him further, but sprang up and streaked for the other side of the street.
Nothing tried to stop me. In a doorway, flat against a wall, I peeped out. The wind had stopped. The rain was no longer a driving deluge, but a steady down-pouring of small drops. Couffignal’s main street, to my senses, was a deserted street.