d. There was a pretty good store, in point of amount,
of tolerable swords and cutlasses. Those were issued. There were, also,
perhaps a score or so of spare muskets. Those were brought out. To my
astonishment, little Mrs. Fisher that I had taken for a doll and a baby,
was not only very active in that service, but volunteered to load the
spare arms.

"For, I understand it well," says she, cheerfully, without a shake in her
voice.

"I am a soldier's daughter and a sailor's sister, and I understand it
too," says Miss Maryon, just in the same way.

Steady and busy behind where I stood, those two beautiful and delicate
young women fell to handling the guns, hammering the flints, looking to
the locks, and quietly directing others to pass up powder and bullets
from hand to hand, as unflinching as the best of tried soldiers.

Sergeant Drooce had brought in word that the pirates were very strong in
numbers--over a hundred was his estimate--and that they were not, even
then, all landed; for, he had seen them in a very good position on the
further side of the Signal Hill, evidently waiting for the rest of their
men to come up. In the present pause, the first we had had since the
alarm, he was telling this over again to Mr. Macey, when Mr. Macey
suddenly cried our: "The signal! Nobody has thought of the signal!"

We knew of no signal, so we could not have thought of it.

"What signal may you mean, sir?" says Sergeant Drooce, looking sharp at
him.

"There is a pile of wood upon the Signal Hill. If it could be
lighted--which never has been done yet--it would be a signal of distress
to the mainland."

Charker cries, directly: "Sergeant Drooce, dispatch me on that duty. Give
me the two men who were on guard with me to-night, and I'll light the
fire, if it can be done."

"And if it can't, Corporal--" Mr. Macey strikes in.

"Look at these ladies and children, sir!" says Charker. "I'd sooner
_light myself_, than not try any chance to save them."

We gave him a Hurrah!--it burst from us, come of it what might--and he
got his two men, and was let out at the gate, and crept away. I had no
sooner come back to my place from being one of the party to handle the
gate, than Miss Maryon said in a low voice behind me:

"Davis, will you look at this powder? This is not right."

I turned my head. Christian George King again, and treachery again! Sea-
water had been conveyed into the magazine, and every grain of powder was