or through which the sunlight poured, he caught again
the flutter of a woman's skirt. A ladder led through the hatchway,
and--almost grasping her frock--he sprang up after Diane, flung
himself on the leads, reached out, and clutching the hatch, slammed
it down on the foremost Oneida's head.

As he slipped the bolt--thank God it had a bolt!--he heard the man
drop from the ladder with a muffled thud. Then, safe for a moment,
he ran to the battlements and shouted down at the pitch of his voice.

"Forty-sixth! This way, Forty-sixth!"

His voice sounded passing strange to him. Nor for two years had it
been lifted to pronounce an English word.

Having sent down his call he ran back swiftly to the closed hatchway;
and as he knelt, pressing upon it with both hands, his eyes met
Diane's.

She stood by the flagstaff with a pistol in her hand. But her hand
hung stiffly by her hip as it had dropped at the sound of his shout,
and her eyes stared on him. At her feet lay the Commandant, his hand
still rigid upon the halliards, his breast covered by the folds of
the fallen flag, and behind her, as the bursting shell had killed and
huddled it, the body of old Sergeant Bedard.

Why she stood there, pistol in hand, he could partly guess.
How these two corpses came here he could not guess at all.
The Commandant, mortally wounded, had grasped at the falling flag,
and with a dying effort had bent it upon the spare halliards and
tried to hoist. It lay now, covering a wound which had torn his
chest open, coat and flesh, and laid his ribs bare.

But John a Cleeve, kneeling upon the hatchway, understood nothing of
this. What beat on his brain was the vision of a face below--the
face of the officer commanding--turned upwards in blank astonishment
at his shout of "Forty-sixth! This way, Forty-sixth!"

The Indians were battering the hatch with their musket-butts.
The bolt shook. He pressed his weight down on the edge, keeping his
head well back to be out of the way of bullets. Luckily the timbers
of the hatch were stout, and moreover it had a leaden casing, but
this would avail nothing when the Indians began to fire at the
hinges--as they surely would.

He found himself saying aloud in French, "Run, mademoiselle!--I won't
answer for the hinges. Call again to the red-coats! They will
help."

But still, while blow after blow shook the hatch, Diane crouched
motionless, staring at him with wild eyes.

"They will help," he re