As soon as Silver disappeared, Captain Smollett turned back toward the blockhouse. He had been watching Silver carefully, but now he saw that almost everyone had left their positions except Gray.
It was the first time we had ever seen the captain truly angry.
“Back to your posts!” he shouted.
We quickly returned to our places.
“Gray,” he said, “I will write your name in the ship’s log. You have done your duty like a true sailor.”
Then he looked at the others.
“Mr. Trelawney, I am disappointed in you.”
“Doctor, I thought you had served as a soldier before. If you fought at Fontenoy the way you did just now, you would have been safer staying in bed.”
The doctor’s men hurried back to their firing positions. The others began loading the spare muskets.
Everyone looked embarrassed. The captain’s sharp words had certainly reached them.
After watching us for a moment, Captain Smollett spoke again.
“My lads, I have answered Silver’s threats clearly. I wanted him to understand that we are ready, and he said they would attack within the hour.”
“We are outnumbered. There is no denying that. But we have the advantage of this shelter.”
“Just a moment ago, I would have said we were also fighting with discipline. If you choose to do your duty, I have no doubt we can defeat them.”
He then walked around the blockhouse to check our defenses.
The east and west walls each had only two shooting holes. The south wall, where the porch stood, also had two. The north wall had five.
There were twenty muskets for the seven of us. Firewood had been stacked into four piles, one against each side of the house. They were like small tables, with ammunition and four loaded muskets placed on each one.
In the center of the room, our cutlasses were lined up and ready.
“Put out the fire,” said the captain. “The cold is gone now, and we cannot afford smoke blocking our view.”
Mr. Trelawney carried the iron fire basket outside, and the burning coals were covered with sand.
“Hawkins has not eaten breakfast yet,” Captain Smollett continued. “Hawkins, take some food and eat quickly. You will need your strength.”
“Hunter, give everyone a small drink of brandy.”
While this was happening, the captain finished planning our defense.
“Doctor, you take the door. Stay inside and fire through the porch. Do not expose yourself.”
“Hunter, you take the east side.”
“Joyce, you guard the west.”
“Mr. Trelawney, you are the best shot among us. You and Gray will take the north side with the five shooting holes. That is where the greatest danger will come.”
“If the enemy reaches that side and fires through our own openings, we will be in serious trouble.”
“Hawkins, neither you nor I are good enough shots to make much difference. We will stay ready to load guns and help wherever needed.”
The captain was right about the cold.
When the sun rose above the trees, its heat poured into the clearing and quickly dried the morning mist. Soon the sand became hot, and the resin inside the logs began to melt.
We threw off our coats and opened our shirts at the neck. Each of us stood at his assigned position, sweating in the heat and waiting anxiously.
An hour passed.
“Curse them,” said the captain. “This waiting is as boring as being stuck in the middle of the ocean without wind.”
“Gray, whistle for a breeze.”
At that very moment, the first sign of the attack came.
“Excuse me, sir,” Joyce called. “If I see anyone, should I fire?”
“I already told you that!” cried the captain.
“Thank you, sir,” Joyce replied calmly.
After that, everything became tense.
We listened carefully and watched every shadow. The men held their muskets ready. Captain Smollett stood in the middle of the blockhouse, his lips tight and his face serious.
A few seconds passed.
Suddenly, Joyce raised his musket and fired.
The sound had barely faded when more shots answered from outside. Bullets came from all around the stockade, one after another, like a flock of birds flying overhead.
Several bullets struck the log walls, but none entered.
When the smoke cleared, the forest and the stockade looked silent again.
No branches moved.
No gun barrels flashed.
There was no sign of the enemy.
“Did you hit anyone?” asked the captain.
“No, sir,” Joyce answered. “I do not think so.”
“Good. At least you told the truth,” muttered Captain Smollett.
“Hawkins, reload his gun.”
“Doctor, how many men fired from your side?”
“I know exactly,” said Dr. Livesey. “Three shots came from here. I saw three flashes. Two were close together, and one was farther west.”
“Three,” repeated the captain.
“And how many from your side, Mr. Trelawney?”
That was harder to answer.
Many shots had come from the north. The squire counted seven, while Gray thought there were eight or nine.
Only one shot had come from the east and one from the west.
It was obvious that the real attack would come from the north. The other sides were only meant to distract us.
Still, Captain Smollett did not change his plan.
“If they get over the stockade,” he explained, “they could take any empty shooting hole and fire at us from our own defenses. We cannot leave any position unprotected.”
We had little time left to think.
Suddenly, with a loud cheer, a group of pirates burst from the northern woods and charged straight toward the stockade.
At the same moment, more shots came from the trees. A rifle bullet flew through the doorway and smashed the doctor’s musket into pieces.
The pirates climbed over the fence like monkeys.
The squire and Gray fired again and again.
Three men fell.
One dropped inside the stockade. Two fell back outside.
But one of those men was not badly hurt. He quickly stood up and vanished into the trees.
Two pirates were dead.
One had escaped.
Four had reached the inside of our defenses.
Meanwhile, seven or eight men hidden in the woods kept firing at the blockhouse, though their shots did little damage.
The four pirates who had entered rushed straight toward the building, shouting loudly.
The men outside shouted back, encouraging them.
Several shots were fired, but the attackers were moving too quickly, and none seemed to hit.
Within moments, the four pirates reached the mound beside the blockhouse.
The head of Job Anderson, the boatswain, appeared at the middle shooting hole.
“Come on, everyone! Attack!” he roared.
At the same moment, another pirate grabbed Hunter’s musket by the barrel.
He pulled it away, dragged it through the opening, and struck Hunter so hard that the poor man fell unconscious.
Another pirate ran around the house and suddenly appeared at the doorway. He raised his cutlass and attacked the doctor.
Everything had changed.
A moment earlier, we had been safely firing at enemies outside.
Now we were exposed, and they were inside our defenses.
The blockhouse filled with smoke.
The noise was terrible.
People shouted.
Pistols fired.
Someone screamed.
A loud groan echoed through the room.
“Out, lads! Out into the open! Fight them with cutlasses!” shouted Captain Smollett.
I grabbed a cutlass from the pile.
At the same moment, someone else grabbed another one and accidentally cut my knuckles.
I barely noticed.
I rushed through the doorway into the bright sunlight.
Someone followed behind me, though I did not know who.
Ahead of me, the doctor was chasing his attacker down the hill. Just as I looked over, he struck the pirate’s weapon aside and knocked him to the ground with a powerful cut across the face.
“Around the house! Go around the house!” shouted the captain.
Even in the chaos, I noticed a change in his voice.
I followed his order.
I turned east and ran around the corner with my cutlass raised.
Suddenly, I came face to face with Anderson.
He shouted and lifted his heavy sword above his head.
I had no time to feel afraid.
As his blade came down, I jumped aside.
My foot slipped in the soft sand, and I rolled down the slope.
When I first rushed outside, the other pirates were already climbing over the stockade.
One man wearing a red nightcap had his cutlass between his teeth and was halfway over the top.
Another pirate’s head was just appearing above the fence.
But in that very short time, the battle had already changed.
Gray, following close behind me, cut down Anderson before he could recover.
Another pirate was shot through a loophole while firing at the house. He fell badly wounded, his pistol still smoking in his hand.
The doctor had already defeated the third attacker.
Of the four pirates who had entered the stockade, only one remained.
He had dropped his cutlass and was now desperately climbing back over the fence.
“Fire from the house!” shouted the doctor.
“Everyone, get back inside!”
But no one fired.
The last pirate escaped and disappeared into the woods with the others.
Within seconds, the attack was over.
Only five pirates remained where they had fallen—four inside the stockade and one outside.
The doctor, Gray, and I ran back for shelter.
The surviving pirates would soon return to collect their weapons, and the shooting could begin again at any moment.
Inside the blockhouse, the smoke had begun to clear.
We immediately saw the cost of our victory.
Hunter lay beside his shooting hole, unconscious.
Joyce lay beside his position, shot in the head and never to move again.
In the middle of the room, the squire was supporting Captain Smollett.
Both men were pale.
“The captain is wounded,” said Mr. Trelawney.
“Did they escape?” asked Captain Smollett.
“All who could escape have done so,” answered the doctor. “But five of them will never run again.”
“Five!” cried the captain.
“That is better news. Five against three means we now have four men against nine.”
“When we started, we were seven against nineteen—or at least we believed we were.”
“That was much worse.”
(Unknown to us at the time, the pirates would soon be reduced to eight men because the man Mr. Trelawney had wounded on the schooner died that evening. But our side would not learn this until later.)