re the sailors
strove to protect a few shrieking women had not been broken in. Here,
then, was a tiny bay of refuge; from it the men of the _Andromeda_ and
the _Unser Fritz_, Bulmer, Verity, Iris, and such of the Brazilian ladies
as had not fled to the upper rooms at the initial volley, looked out on
an amazing butchery. De Sylva, no longer young, and never a robust man,
had been dragged from mortal peril many times by his devoted adherents.
Carmela had snatched a machete from the fingers of a dying soldier, and
was fighting like one possessed of a fiend.

Once, when a combined rush drove the defenders nearly on top of the
non-combatants, Iris would have striven to draw the half-demented girl
into the little haven with the other women.

But Coke thrust her back, shouting:

"Leave 'er alone. She'll set about you if you touch her!"

Dickey Bulmer, too, who was displaying a fortitude hardly to be expected
in a man of his years and habits, thought that interference was useless.

"Let 'er do what she can," he said. "She doesn't know wot is 'appenin'
now. If she was on'y watchin' she'd be a ravin' lunatic. God 'elp us
all, we've got ourselves into a nice mess!"

Somehow, the old man's Lancashire drawl, with its broad vowels and
misplaced aspirates, exercised a singularly soothing effect on Iris's
tensely-strung nerves. It seemed to remove her from that murder-filled
arena. It was redolent of home, of quiet streets, of orderly crowds
thronging to the New Brighton sands, of the sober, industrious,
God-fearing folk who filled the churches and chapels at each service on a
Sunday. These men and women of Brazil were her brothers and sisters in
the great comity of nations, yet Heaven knows they did not figure in such
guise during that hour of intense emotions.

But if Dickey Bulmer's simple words exalted him into the kingdom of the
heroic, David Verity occupied a lower plane. Prayers and curses
alternated on his lips. He was stupefied with fear. He had never seen
the lust of slaying in men's eyes, and it mesmerized him. Many of the
sailors wanted to join in on behalf of their friends. It needed all
Coke's vehemence to restrain them. "Keep out of it, you swabs," he would
growl. "It's your on'y chanst. This isn't our shindy. Let 'em rip an'
be hanged to 'em!" Yet he was manifestly uneasy, and he kept a wary eye
on De Sylva, whom he appraised at a personal value of five thousand
pounds "an pickin's."

A tall