e must have been a dead man
when he dropped, for we found afterwards that the ball had fairly
ripped the inside out of the poor chap."

He closed the door as he finished speaking, and a heavy bar was placed
in position across the stout planks. From one of the small, slit-like
windows they watched the movements of the dacoits. The _jingal_, a big
muzzle-loader on a stand of iron forks, was touched off and a heavy
shot crashed into the door.

"Whew!" whistled Jim. "That's a heavier shot than I thought. That bit
of iron weighed nearer half a pound than anything."

"It's cut into the door pretty badly," cried Jack, who had run forward
to look, and found a long streak of white in the plank which had been
struck. "We shall have to stop that or the door will be down."

"Sure thing," said Buck, "an' those little tigers away to the left o'
the _jingal_ are massing for a rush as soon as the gunners have worked
the door loose."

"You're right, Buck," said Jack, who had returned to his window. "Look
here," he went on, "there are three windows facing that patch of
jungle where the dacoits are clustered. We'll take a window apiece.
I'll give the word, and we'll empty our magazines into them as fast as
we can pull the trigger."

"Good plan," cried Buck. "It will show 'em we're well armed and an
awkward lot to tackle, even if we don't scare 'em off."

"There ain't much scare about them, worse luck," said Jim, "but we'll
pepper 'em a bit an' see what happens anyhow."

Each of them had unslung his Mannlicher and held it in hand since the
moment of the first alarm, and now they opened the magazine and saw
that all was in perfect order. Then they threw the deadly little
rifles into the embrasures formed by the window slits, and all was
ready for the word.

"Fire!" cried Jack, and the swift trill of rifle-cracks rang out on
the soft evening silence. As swiftly as they could press finger on
trigger, the three comrades emptied their magazines completely into
the fringe of forest three hundred yards away. This storm of tiny,
whirling slips of lead struck among the dacoits at point blank range,
and, by the screams and yells of the banditti, did much execution. The
watchers distinctly saw three or four fall, but these were swiftly
dragged among the trees by their comrades, and for a moment not a
single dacoit was to be seen. Then, just inside the shelter of the
trees, five figures were observed very busy placing a new _jingal_ in
pos