ad expected a charge, but it did not come. Ben and Mundy had in
all evidence taken command now. Their backs were to him as they issued
short orders which he could not catch. But their purport was plain
enough. He took his revolver from its holster and laid it in front of
him upon a board across the top of one of the barrels.

Silently the men were falling back. And as they retreated they spread
out into a great semicircle, wider and wider. He saw that fifty,
perhaps seventy-five, of them had revolvers in their hands. And he saw
that these men stood in advance of their companions. In another five
minutes, in less than five minutes, the semicircle would be a circle
of which he would be the center. Then they would close in on him, and
then--

There must be no _then_. That was the one thing clear. He might shoot
down a dozen of them, but they would get him in the end. At one end of
the slowly widening arc was Ben the Englishman. At the other was
Mundy.

"Ben!" shouted Conniston, sharply. "You've got to stop that! Mundy,
stop where you are! I don't want to kill you fellows, but I'll do it
if you keep on!"

In the beginning he had hoped to bluff them. Now such hope had died
out of him. These were the sort of men who would want to see the other
man's cards laid down on the table. And he knew that he must make good
his bluff or there would in sober truth be an end of him. His voice
rang with cold determination. And Ben and Mundy stopped.

Conniston watched that line of black faces, and as his eyes clung to
the threatening arc he thought with a queer twitching of the lips of
the football line-ups which he had watched in other days. He was
surprised that his feelings now were much as they had been then. It
was a game, and that in the other games a goal had been the thing he
schemed and battled for while now it was his life made little
difference. He was surprised that he was cool, that his heart beat
steadily, that his hands upon his gun were like rock.

There was something strange in the way the men were watching him,
something in their sudden silence, in their eager faces, which puzzled
him. Their whole attitude spoke of one thing--a breathless waiting.
What were they waiting for? Had his words put the fear of death in
them? Were they watching to see if he was going to shoot down the men
who led them? Was there a chance--

His taut senses told him of a danger which he could not understand.
Something was wrong; death ho