I had been standing in the aisle, with my hand upon one of the chairs
near the rostrum and now I turned to Nah-ee-lah who was standing
close beside me.
“Come,” I said to her, “follow me; stay close behind me.” Several of
the Kalkars were coming down the main aisle toward us, and as I
turned toward them from speaking to Nah-ee-lah, I raised the chair
which my hand had been resting upon, and swinging it quickly around
my head hurled it full in the face of the leader. As he went down Nah-
ee-lah and I ran forward, gaining a little toward the opening of the
tunnel, and then without pausing I hurled another chair and a third
and a fourth, in rapid succession. The Kalkars tried to bring us down
with their lances, but they were so busy dodging chairs that they
could not cast their weapons accurately, and even those few which
might otherwise have struck us were warded off by my rather
remarkable engines of defense.
There had been four Kalkars advancing toward us down the center
aisle. The balance of the party had divided, half of it circling the
cave to the left and the other half to the right, with the evident
intention of coming up the center aisle from behind us. This maneuver
had started just before I commenced hurling chairs at the four
directly in front of us, and now when those who had intended to take
us from the rear discovered that we were likely to make our way
through to the tunnel’s entrance, some of them sprang toward us along
the passageways between the chairs, which necessitated my turning and
devoting a moment’s attention to them. One huge fellow was in the
lead, coming across the backs of the chairs leaping from seat to
seat; and being the closest to me, he was naturally my first target.
The chairs were rather heavy and the one that I let drive at him
caught him full in the chest with an impact that brought a howl from
him and toppled him over across the backs of the chairs behind him,
where he hung limp and motionless. Then I turned my attention again
to those before us, all of whom had fallen before my massive
ammunition. Three of them lay still, but one of them had scrambled to
his feet and was in the very act of casting his lance as I looked. I
stopped the weapon with a chair and as the fellow went down I caught
a glimpse of Nah-ee-lah from the corners of my eyes as she snatched
the lance from the first Kalkar who had fallen and hurled it at
someone behind me. I heard a scream of rage and pain and then I
turned in time to see another of the Kalkars fall almost at my feet,
the lance imbedded in his heart.
The way before us was temporarily open, while the Kalkars behind us
had paused, momentarily, at least, in evident consternation at the
havoc I wrought with these unseemly weapons against which they had no
defense.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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