buildings, lest they should be set on fire), and we made the best
disposition we could. 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