airingly around. There were as
many dead as living within the room by this. The floor was piled with
the slain; they made traps for the living who in the wild surging to and
fro stumbled over them, and fell, and were slain before they could rise.
Three fourths of the dead belonged to the insurgents, but the attacked
had suffered severely. Of the thirty men with whom the defense had
commenced there now remained but twelve, and of that number several were
wounded. The Colonel was bleeding from a cut on the head, the under
overseer had a ball through his arm, Sir Charles still lay without
movement at Landless's feet.

Forced, together with almost all of his party, by the mad rush of the
assailants to the further end of the room, the master had seen with
agony the women left well-nigh defenseless. Followed by Woodson,
Havisham, Regulus, and young Whittington, he had all but cut his way
back to them, when a fresh influx from the hall of slaves and whites who
had been engaged in plundering the house, drove them apart again.

The newcomers came fresh to the work, maddened, moreover, by the
master's wines. They advanced upon the Colonel and his party with
drunken shouts, some brandishing rude weapons, others silver salvers and
tankards, the spoil of the plate chest. The voice of Luiz Sebastian rang
through the room. "Quick work of them, friends; I smell the morning!"
With a laugh and a scrap of Spanish song upon his lips he came at
Landless with a knife, but a turn of the white man's wrist sent the
weapon hurling through the air.

"Curse you!" cried the mulatto, springing out of reach of the deadly
point, and holding his arm from which the blood was flowing. "Mother of
God! but I will have you yet!" and bounded towards his weapon. Landless,
steadily watchful, and pointing that fatal sword this way or that
against all comers, cleared for himself and the still senseless man at
his feet a circle into which few cared to intrude, for the fame of that
blade had gone through the room. "Leave him until we have dealt with the
others," said the mulatto between his teeth. "Then will we give him
reason to wish that he had never been born."

A touch upon his arm, and Landless turned to find Patricia standing
beside him. "Go back," he cried. "Go back!"

"They are murdering them all over there," she said steadily. "My father
is dead. I saw him fall."

"Not so, madam. He did but stumble over the dead. See, Woodson fights
them back from