The children flung themselves at Gorbo and hugged him, and Sylvia was shaking with sobs. He squeezed them to him for just one instant and then jumped away. “Where’s Mother Meldrum?” he said quickly.
“She’s in there,” replied Joe, pointing across.
Gorbo crept up cautiously, looking about him as he went. Suddenly he gave an exclamation. “Look!” he cried, pointing to the opposite side of the ravine.
The old witch was climbing, climbing up the rocks, and behind her came the black cats. Gorbo rushed to the edge of the ravine and shot. The arrow fell short. He shot again and again, but it was useless; the distance was too great for a bow. And Mother Meldrum climbed and climbed, with an agility and strength that appeared miraculous.
Gorbo turned again, for there was a mighty trampling behind him. Up came the Snergs and the Dutch seamen, headed by their leaders. The children and fallen body of Golithos took but an instant of their attention for Gorbo shouted that Mother Meldrum was escaping.
The Snergs ranged along the edge of the ravine and shot thick and fast so that the air was full of arrows, but the old witch was well out of range and she knew it. She had reached a flat part near the summit of the cliff, and the tunnel that led through the barren rocks was close at hand. With a shrill screaming laugh that sounded horridly across the ravine she danced a fantastic dance of triumph, something between an Irish jig and a coranto. O hideous sight!
But little did this hag of mediæval days know of the strides of science. The voice of Vanderdecken (who had so wisely trained his seamen in the part) rang out:
“Musketeers, advance! Handle your muskets! Cock your muskets! Aim your muskets! Fire! Recover your muskets!”
At the word “Fire,” three-and-thirty shots shook the air and echoed from the rocky crags. A dark cloud of smoke hung over the scene.
The smoke drifted away.
“Where,” said King Merse, “is Mother Meldrum?”
Vanderdecken handed him his telescope. “There is something like bits of rags sticking on the rocks,” he said. “And I think I can see a hand hanging over the edge of the cliff. See what you can make of it.”
“Yes,” agreed King Merse as he looked, “it is undoubtedly as you say. That is Mother Meldrum—or part of her.”
Thus it was. When three-and-thirty muskets of the kind made in Vanderdecken’s day, loaded with double bullets and a half handful of buckshot, are fired simultaneously by expert marksmen at the same target the result is effective. Mother Meldrum had been blown to bits.