it, and saw four men leap from the gig to
the rock which it was life or death for us to hold. And to Dolly I
said:

"Let go, lad; let go, in Heaven's name!"

He stood to the gun; and clear above all other sounds of the night the
sharp reports rang out. That peaceful, sleeping sea awoke to an hour
the like to which Ken's Island will never know again. We cast the glove
to Edmond Czerny and powder spake our message. Henceforth it was his
day or ours, life or death, the gallows or the sea.

There were four men upon the rock when the gun began to spurt its vomit
of shot across the sea, and two of them fell almost with the first
report. I saw a third dragging himself across the crags and pressing a
hand madly against every stone as though to quench some burning flame;
a fourth crouched down and began to cry to his fellows in the boats for
mercy's sake to put in for him; but before they could lift a hand or
ship an oar the fire was among them; and skimming the waves for a
moment, then carrying beyond them, it caught them as a hail of burning
steel at last and shut their lips forever. Aye, how shall I tell you of
it truly--the worming, tortured men, the gaping wounds they showed, the
madness which sent them headlong into the sea, the sagging boat dipping
beneath them, the despair, the terror, when death came like a
whirlwind? These things I shut from my eyes; I would not see them.
The sharp reports, the words of agony, the oaths, the ferocious
threats--they came and went as a storm upon the wind. And afterwards
when silence fell, and I beheld the silver sea, the island wreathed
in mists, ships' boats in the distance like dots upon the water, the
ebbing flames where the steamer burned, the woods wherein honest seamen
suffered in the death-trance from which but few would waken, I turned
to my comrades and, hand linked in hand, I said, "Well done!"

CHAPTER XXI

WHICH BRINGS IN THE DAY AND WHAT BEFELL THEREIN

It was just after dawn that Miss Ruth came up from her room below and
found me at my lonely post on the plateau of the watch-tower rock.
Dolly Venn was fast asleep by that time, and Peter Bligh and the
carpenter no less willing for a spell of rest. I had sent them to their
beds when it was plain to me that, whatever might come after, the night
had nothing more in store for us; and though heavy with sleep myself I
put it by for duty's sake.

Now, I was watching all alone, my rifle between my knees and my eyes
upon