"Ha, ha, ha! hear him," cried the first beggar. "He is quite a treat."
"What I meant was that I am a trap for you. I have set myself to catch you; I am the bait; the leech fishers are their own bait, I am my own.
So now come on, my merry men, my unbelieving pagans."
One of the men here laid a rough hand upon his shoulder, when there was a loud explosion.
A flash and smoke issued from the old man"s square coat pocket, and the brigand staggered back.
The rest of the party looked utterly amazed.
What was it?
"An ambuscade," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed one of them.
"No, no; it came from the old man"s coat skirt. See, it is smoking."
There was a small round hole in the cloth, and it was singed and smelt of gunpowder.
"Death to the spy!" cried the Greeks.
Two of the brigands fell upon him, one on each side, when lo! there was a double explosion, and with loud cries of pain, each fell back dead.
The rest of the brigands now began to recover from the state of stupefaction into which this sudden and unexpected attack had thrown them, and accustomed to rapid action upon emergencies such as the present, they prepared to fall simultaneously upon this ancient Tartar.
"Oh, oh! What, you think to capture me, do you?" he cried.
In an instant all his feebleness had dropped, and lo! he appeared a very nimble man.
Springing back about six feet, he drew both hands from those capacious pockets to which we recently drew the reader"s attention, and then the mystery was revealed.
Each had held a six-barrelled revolver.
"How like you my music, you ruffians?" cried the strange man. "Oh, what would I give if my poor friend Pike was with me now!"
Bang!
Another shot, and another _hors de combat._
The foremost of the brigands rolled over, stone dead.
This was warm work.
But as if it had not grown hot enough, there suddenly appeared upon the scene two men armed with rifles and revolvers.
These two men were crack shots, unluckily for the brigands, and they speedily gave proof of their skill.
Two of the mountaineers bit the dust before they could dream of helping themselves.
Not three minutes had elapsed since the firing of the first shot, and already six men were down.
"Surrender!" said one of the new-comers, in a loud, authoritative voice.
But instead of responding, one of the Greeks drew a pistol and levelled it at the towering figure of Harkaway, for of course he was one of the marksmen, but before he could pull the trigger, bang went another chamber of the old man"s revolver, and the pistol fell to the ground.
The hand which had held it was helpless, the arm shattered at the elbow.
There was in truth something dreadful in this carnage.
But neither Harkaway nor Jefferson thought any thing of this.
Indeed, horrible as it may sound, they killed a brigand with as little compunction as they would have slaughtered a wolf.
"Surrender!" cried Harkaway, for the second time. "Yield now, or by Heaven, you shall all die on the field."
The Greeks looked around for a.s.sistance.
They were five.
The enemy only three.
As a rule, these ruffians were not deficient in bulldog courage and ferocity, but this desperate fighting had surprised and frightened them.
"Yield, ruffians, to better men than yourselves."
They paused.
"To pause is death," cried Jack Harkaway, in a loud voice.
As the last word was spoken, up went the two rifles.
"Nabley," cried the American.
"All right," answered the disguised old man.
"Look after that outside brigand on your left."
"I will, and his neighbour, too?"
"If you can."
"I am thinking of my murdered friend, Pike, and I feel I can take twenty such vagabonds!" echoed the detective, fiercely.
"I"ll take that big fellow, Jeff," said Harkaway. "You pot the other."
"Good."
"Now, then, you villains, when I count three, look out," said the detective, with a mild expletive.