"Now mind, you fellows," said Jack Jaikes, "fire low and steady. They are ten times our numbers, but we will fight in shelter and we have these beauties!" He patted the three mitrailleuses in turn. He had taken charge of the middle one himself, and set his friend Allerdyce and young Brown to command those on either side. We stood at attention, each man knowing that the time could not be long. Far down towards the Chateau we heard the rush and jar of an attack. A similar noise came from farther up the wall towards the fitting shops. "Jehoshaphat, they are flanking us!" exclaimed Jack Jaikes. And before anyone could interfere--supposing that any had so dared--Jack Jaikes had stepped outside the wall into the cumbered Cours of Aramon. I took the liberty of following. Away to the right we could see nothing, except the clouds of smoke drifting up or being tossed by the rough sudden swoop of the blast, stooping down out of the moonlit heavens and the night of stars. Jack Jaikes must have been conscious of my presence, but he did not order me back. He was talking to himself and he wanted a listener. As Bacon says, he wanted a friend with whom to toss his ideas as a haymaker tosses hay. "Down there by the Chateau doesn't matter," he said, looking that way long and earnestly, "Dennis Deventer is there--with MacIntyre and the whole Clydebank gang--little to fear there. Listen, young fellow, how the machine guns are barking--_U-r-r-r-rh!_ I wish ours were talking too, but that mortar shot rather scared them--though it ought not--easy thing to rush a four-inch gun firing shell at that distance and with their numbers. One hole in the line, and then you are upon her. But--see, young un, there they go butting in at the corner of the wall yonder. We must give them a volley. Fellows, run out the mitrailleuses--my own one first. Easy there over the stones! Now the others!" Presently with the three machine guns we were standing completely shelterless in the Cours of Aramon with half a dozen darksome streets and alleyways gaping at us truculently. "Turn them to the left," he shouted. "Farther out, Allerdyce! Keep your alignment, you Brown--swearing's forbidden, but think that ye hear Donald Iverach at it!" The light little guns with the pepperpot snouts were swiftly swung round in the direction of the scaling ladders and the hurrying clouds of men. Each man, Allerdyce, Brown, and Jack Jaikes himself, had his hand on the handle which was to grind death. "Lie down, you sweeps!" he called to us. "Flat--not a head up." We lay down, but I looked sideways between the wheels of the centre machine gun. The long legs of Jack Jaikes almost bestrode me. "GO!" And then all hell broke loose. The noise of the jarring explosions melted into one infernal whoop, and seemed to ride the storm which at this moment was mounting to the heavens from the south and shutting out the moon.