ormed of
the arrival and departure of the enemy scout. The word passed among the
warriors, who, despite their innate equanimity, began to grit their
pointed teeth and quiver like dogs held in leash. But another hour
passed, and yet another; and still no word from the outposts arrived.

Suddenly a chorus of screams shrilled from the women outside. In a
frenzy of fear they plunged through the doorways. Blending with their
outcries, a hoarse yell of ferocity rose raucously from the direction of
the creek. At once a louder ululation burst forth at the rear and sides
of the clearing. Monitaya's outguards had failed and the _malocas_ were
surrounded.

Loping from the bush fringing the stream came a score of yellow-faced,
shirtless, barefooted brutes crisscrossed with cartridge belts and
gripping rifles. At their head loomed a burly black-whiskered creature
with a revolver in each hand--the malignant Schwandorf himself.

Grinning like a pack of yellow-fanged wolves, they doubled toward the
low entrances, their guns spouting wantonly at the upper walls--a ragged
volley meant to terrorize the defenseless women within, none of whom
were to be killed until the handsomest had been cut out and set aside
for slavery. Some of the heavy bullets bored through between logs and
thudded wickedly into rafters and roof poles within. But from the
loopholes where the defending rifles lurked no shot cracked in reply.

The fiendish howling of the Red Bones, sweeping in from all sides to the
butchery, swelled into a feline screech that almost drowned the roar of
the rifles. Into the view of the watchers at the loopholes streamed
hideous faces and naked brown bodies swerving inward from left and right
to follow at the heels of the Blackbeard and his gunmen. In a few
seconds more the trotting line of Peruvians was backed and flanked by a
horde of demons hungering for the taste of women and babes. On they
came--

With the suddenness of a cataclysm the ground opened. Riflemen vanished
in midstride. Savages screaming triumphant hate were gone in the flick
of an eye. Others, instinctively digging their heels into the ground the
instant those ahead of them disappeared, were hurled forward and down by
the momentum of the following mass. Before the rush could be checked the
trenches were packed with men struggling in frenzy to get out, wounding
themselves and one another with the deadly points of their poisoned
weapons.

Of the twenty gunmen only f