Mary vanished into the darkness. Men clustered around the skipper,
sealing-guns, pistols, cutlasses and clubs in their hands, their
grumblings forgotten in the prospect of a fight. The open door was shut
with a bang.

"Follow me!" shouted the skipper, dropping the dispatch-box of loose
jewels to the trampled snow and pulling his pistols from his pocket.

The men of Chance Along and Pierre Benoist's ruffians met at the foot of
the steep slope, among the upper rank of cabins. All doubts as to the
intentions of the visitors were dispelled from the skipper's mind by a
voice shouting, "Git inside the houses, lads, an' pull up the floors.
There bes where ye'll find the stuff. Git into the big house. _It_ be
fair full o' gold an' jewels."

The voice was that of Dick Lynch. The skipper knew it, and his pistols
flashed and banged in his hands.

The light of the stars, dimmed by a high, thin veil of mist, was not
good enough to fight scientifically by. After the first clash it was
almost impossible to know friend from foe at the length of an arm.
Single combats, and cursing knots of threes and fours, staggered and
swatted among the little dwellings. The work was entirely too close for
gun-work, and so the weapons were clubbed and the affair hammered out
like hot irons on an anvil.

After ten minutes of it the skipper found himself in front of his own
door, with a four-foot stick of green birch in his hands, and something
wet and warm trickling from his forehead into his left eye. Three men
were at him. Bill McKay was one of them and Pierre Benoist another.
McKay fought with a clubbed musket, and the French sailor held a dirk in
one hand and an empty pistol in the other. The third prodded about in
the background with a cutlass. He seemed to be of a retiring
disposition.

The skipper defended his position heroically; but after two minutes of
it the musket proved heavier than the club of birch, and he received a
crack on his left shoulder that put one arm out of action. The
Frenchman ducked and slipped in; but the skipper's boot on his
collar-bone set him back for a moment and sent the knife tinkling to the
ground. But the same movement, thanks to the little wad of snow on the
heel of his boot, brought the skipper to the flat of his back with a
bone-shaking slam. The clubbed musket swung up--and then the door flew
open above his upturned face, candle-light flooded over him and a
sealing-gun flashed and bellowed. Then the thr