"Yes, they'll do their level best to cut our throats," agreed Jim. "They're like a nest of hornets. Touch one and you've touched the lot." "Hullo, they're bringing something forward," cried Jack. "It looks like a clumsy gun on a stand." "That's a _jingal_," said Jim. "They're laying it for the door. We'll get out of the way. It's a clumsy weapon and a clumsy ball, but if it hits you, you get all you want an' a little bit over. I remember in '85"--for Jim had once been a British redcoat and had fought in the Burmese war--"we were carrying a stockade with a rush, and a chum o' mine got a _jingal_-ball and went down. He must have been a dead man when he dropped, for we found afterwards that the ball had fairly ripped the inside out of the poor chap." He closed the door as he finished speaking, and a heavy bar was placed in position across the stout planks. From one of the small, slit-like windows they watched the movements of the dacoits. The _jingal_, a big muzzle-loader on a stand of iron forks, was touched off and a heavy shot crashed into the door. "Whew!" whistled Jim. "That's a heavier shot than I thought. That bit of iron weighed nearer half a pound than anything." "It's cut into the door pretty badly," cried Jack, who had run forward to look, and found a long streak of white in the plank which had been struck. "We shall have to stop that or the door will be down." "Sure thing," said Buck, "an' those little tigers away to the left o' the _jingal_ are massing for a rush as soon as the gunners have worked the door loose." "You're right, Buck," said Jack, who had returned to his window. "Look here," he went on, "there are three windows facing that patch of jungle where the dacoits are clustered. We'll take a window apiece. I'll give the word, and we'll empty our magazines into them as fast as we can pull the trigger." "Good plan," cried Buck. "It will show 'em we're well armed and an awkward lot to tackle, even if we don't scare 'em off." "There ain't much scare about them, worse luck," said Jim, "but we'll pepper 'em a bit an' see what happens anyhow." Each of them had unslung his Mannlicher and held it in hand since the moment of the first alarm, and now they opened the magazine and saw that all was in perfect order. Then they threw the deadly little rifles into the embrasures formed by the window slits, and all was ready for the word.