!" cries he, "'Tis on us mates--look, look yonder! Death and
wounds--yonder he comes for all of us--O mates look! Yon's death--for
all on us!"

But in this moment I leaped down upon them from above, sending one man
sprawling and scattering their fire, and 'mid whirling sparks and
smoke, within this dim rock-cleft we fought with a merciless fury and
desperation beyond words. A pistol flashed and roared and then another
as I leapt with whirling axe and darting knife. I remember a wild
hurly-burly of random blows, voices that shouted hoarse blasphemies,
screams and groans, a whirl of vicious arms, of hands that clutched;
once I reeled to hard-driven sword-thrust, a knife flashed and stabbed
beneath my arm, but twice I got home with my knife and once a man
sobbed and went down beneath my hatchet--and then they were running and
I after them. But I had taken a scathe in my leg and twice I fell;
thus they reached their boat with some hundred yards to spare, and I
saw their frantic struggles to launch it as I staggered after them; but
ere I could reach them they had it afloat and tumbled aboard pell-mell.
Then came I, panting curses, and plunged into the sea, wading after
them up to my middle and so near that, aiming a blow at one of them, I
cut a great chip from the gunwale, but, reeling from the blow of an
oar, sank to my knees, and a wave breaking over me bore me backward,
choking. Thus when I found my feet again they were well away and plying
their oars lustily, whiles I, roaring and shouting, stood to watch them
until the boat was lost in the distance. Now as I stood thus, raging
bitterly at my impotence, I bethought me that I had seen but three men
run and, turning about, hasted back to deal with the fourth. Reaching
the scene of the struggle, I came on the man Humphrey outstretched upon
his back in the moonlight and his face well-nigh shorn asunder. Seeing
him thus so horribly dead, I went aside and fell to scrubbing my
hatchet, blade and haft, with the cleanly sand.

Then came I, and grasping this thing had been named Humphrey, I dragged
it a-down the sands and hove it forthwith into the sea, standing
thereafter to watch it borne out on the receding tide. Now as I watched
thus, came a wave that lifted the thing so that this dead man seemed to
rise up and wave an arm to me ere he vanished.

This done (and I yet alive!) I took to wandering aimlessly hither and
thither, and chancing into the rocky cleft found ly