Barbara Harding took one look at the carnage behind her and then sprang to the window. At a short distance she saw the jungle and at its edge what she was sure was the figure of a man crouching in the long grass.
“Mr. Theriere!” she cried. “Quick! They are killing Byrne,” and then she turned back into the room, and with the short sword which she still grasped in her hand sprang to the side of the mucker who was offering his life to save her.
Byrne cast a horrified glance at the figure fighting by his side.
“Fer de love o’ Mike! Beat it!” he cried. “Duck! Git out o’ here!”
But the girl only smiled up bravely into his face and kept her place beside him. The mucker tried to push her behind him with one hand while he fought with the other, but she drew away from him to come up again a little farther from him.
The samurai were pushing them closely now. Three men at a time were reaching for the mucker with their long swords. He was bleeding from numerous wounds, but at his feet lay two dead warriors, while a third crawled away with a mortal wound in his abdomen.
Barbara Harding devoted her energies to thrusting and cutting at those who tried to press past the mucker, that they might take him from behind. The battle could not last long, so unequal were the odds. She saw the room beyond filled with surging warriors all trying to force their way within reach of the great white man who battled like some demigod of old in the close, dark, evil warren of the daimio.
She shot a side glance at the man. He was wonderful! The fire of battle had transformed him. No longer was he the sullen, sulky, hulking brute she had first known upon the Halfmoon. Instead, huge, muscular, alert, he towered above his pygmy antagonists, his gray eyes gleaming, a half-smile upon his strong lips.
She saw the long sword, wielded awkwardly in his unaccustomed hands, beat down the weapons of his skilled foemen by the very ferocity of its hurtling attack. She saw it pass through a man’s shoulder, cleaving bone and muscle as if they had been cheese, until it stopped two-thirds across its victim’s body, cutting him almost in two.
She saw a samurai leap past her champion’s guard in an attempt to close upon him with a dagger, and when she had rushed forward to thwart the fellow’s design she had seen Byrne swing his mighty left to the warrior’s face with a blow that might well have felled an ox. Then another leaped into closer quarters and she saw Byrne at the same instant bury his sword in the body of a dark-visaged devil who looked more Malay than Jap, and as the stricken man fell she saw the hilt of the mucker’s blade wrenched from his grip by the dead body of his foe. The samurai who had closed upon Byrne at that instant found his enemy unarmed, and with a howl of delight he struck full at the broad chest with his long, thin dagger.
But Billy Byrne was not to be dispatched so easily. With his left forearm he struck up the hand that wielded the menacing blade, and then catching the fellow by the shoulder swung him around, grasped him about the waist and lifting him above his head hurled him full in the faces of the swordsmen who were pressing through the narrow doorway.
Almost simultaneously a spear shot through a tiny opening in the ranks before Billy Byrne, and with a little gasp of dismay the huge fellow pitched forward upon his face. At the same instant a shot rang out behind Barbara Harding, and Theriere leaped past her to stand across the body of the fallen mucker.
With the sound of the shot a samurai sank to the floor, dead, and the others, unaccustomed to firearms, drew back in dismay. Again Theriere fired point-blank into the crowded room, and this time two men fell, struck by the same bullet. Once more the warriors retreated, and with an exultant yell Theriere followed up his advantage by charging menacingly upon them. They stood for a moment, then wavered, turned and fled from the hut.
When Theriere turned back toward Barbara Harding he found her kneeling beside the mucker.
“Is he dead?” asked the Frenchman.
“No. Can we lift him together and get him through that window?”
“It is the only way,” replied Theriere, “and we must try it.”
They seized upon the huge body and dragged it to the far end of the room, but despite their best efforts the two were not able to lift the great, inert mass of flesh and bone and muscle and pass it through the tiny opening.
“What shall we do?” cried Theriere.
“We must stay here with him,” replied Barbara Harding. “I could never desert the man who has fought so noble a fight for me while a breath of life remained in him.”
Theriere groaned.
“Nor I,” he said; “but you—he has given his life to save yours. Should you render his sacrifice of no avail now?”
“I cannot go alone,” she answered simply, “and I know that you will not leave him. There is no other way—we must stay.”
At this juncture the mucker opened his eyes.
“Who hit me?” he murmured. “Jes’ show me de big stiff.”
Theriere could not repress a smile. Barbara Harding again knelt beside the man.
“No one hit you, Mr. Byrne,” she said. “You were struck by a spear and are badly wounded.”
Billy Byrne opened his eyes a little wider, turning them until they rested on the beautiful face of the girl so close to his.
“Mr. Byrne!” he ejaculated in disgust. “Forget it. Wot do youse tink I am, one of dose paper-collar dudes?”
Then he sat up. Blood was flowing from a wound in his chest, saturating his shirt, and running slowly to the earth floor. There were two flesh wounds upon his head—one
