“Billy!” she cried, the unaccustomed name bursting from her lips involuntarily. “In the bush at your left—look out!”
At the note of warning in her voice Byrne had turned at her first word—it was all that saved his life. He saw the half-naked savage and the out-shooting spear arm, and as he would, instinctively, have ducked a right-for-the-head in the squared circle of his other days, he ducked now, side stepping to the right, and the heavy weapon sped harmlessly over his shoulder.
The warrior, with a growl of rage, drew his sharp parang, leaping to close quarters. Barbara Harding saw Byrne whip Theriere’s revolver from its holster, and snap it in the face of the savage; but to her horror the cartridge failed to explode, and before he could fire again the warrior was upon him.
The girl saw the white man leap to one side to escape the furious cut aimed at him by his foe, and then she saw him turn with the agility of a panther and spring to close quarters with the wild man. Byrne’s left arm went around the Malay’s neck, and with his heavy right fist he rained blow after blow upon the brown face.
The savage dropped his useless parang—clawing and biting at the mighty creature in whose power he found himself; but never once did those terrific, relentless blows cease to fall upon his unprotected face.
The sole witness to this battle primeval stood spellbound at the sight of the fierce, brutal ferocity of the white man, and the lion-like strength he exhibited. Slowly but surely he was beating the face of his antagonist into an unrecognizable pulp—with his bare hands he had met and was killing an armed warrior. It was incredible! Not even Theriere or Billy Mallory could have done such a thing. Billy Mallory! And she was gazing with admiration upon his murderer!
XV
The Rescue
After Byrne had dropped the lifeless form of his enemy to the ground he turned and retraced his steps toward the island, a broad grin upon his face as he climbed to the girl’s side.
“I guess I’d better overhaul this gat,” he said, “and stick around home. It isn’t safe to leave you alone here—I can see that pretty plainly. Gee, supposin’ I’d got out of sight before he showed himself!” And the man shuddered visibly at the thought.
The girl had not spoken and the man looked up suddenly, attracted by her silence. He saw a look of horror in her eyes, such as he had seen there once before when he had kicked the unconscious Theriere that time upon the Halfmoon.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, alarmed. “What have I done now? I had to croak the stiff—he’d have got me sure if I hadn’t, and then he’d have got you, too. I had to do it for your sake—I’m sorry you saw it.”
“It isn’t that,” she said slowly. “That was very brave, and very wonderful. It’s Mr. Mallory I’m thinking of. O Billy! How could you do it?”
The man hung his head.
“Please don’t,” he begged. “I’d give my life to bring him back again, for your sake. I know now that you loved him, and I’ve tried to do all I could to atone for what I did to him; just as I tried to play white with Theriere when I found that he loved you, and intended to be on the square with you. He was your kind, and I hoped that by helping him to win you fairly it might help to wipe out what I had done to Mallory. I see that nothing ever can wipe that out. I’ve got to go through life regretting it because you have taught me what a brutal, cowardly thing I did. If it hadn’t been for you I’d always have been proud of it—but you and Theriere taught me to look at things in a different way than I ever had learned to before. I’m not sorry for that—I’m glad, for if remorse is a part of my punishment I’ll take it gladly and welcome the chance to get a little of what’s coming to me. Only please don’t look at me that way any more—it’s more than I can stand, from you.”
It was the first time that the man ever had opened his heart in any such whole-souled way to her, and it touched the girl more than she would have cared to admit.
“It would be silly to tell you that I ever can forget that terrible affair,” she said; “but somehow I feel that the man who did that was an entirely different man from the man who has been so brave and chivalrous in his treatment of me during the past few weeks.”
“It was me that did it, though,” he said; “you can’t get away from that. It’ll always stick in your memory, so that you can never think of Mr. Mallory without thinking of the damned beast that murdered him—God! and I thought it smart!
“But you have no idea how I was raised, Miss Harding,” he went on. “Not that that’s any excuse for the thing I did; but it does make it seem a wonder that I ever could have made a start even at being decent. I never was well acquainted with any human being that wasn’t a thief, or a pickpocket, or a murderer—and they were all beasts, each in his own particular way, only they weren’t as decent as dumb beasts.
“I wasn’t as crafty as most of them, so I had to hold my own by brute force, and I did it; but, gad, how I accomplished it. The idea of fighting fair,” he laughed at the thought, “was utterly unknown to me. If I’d ever have tried it I’d have seen my finish in a hurry. No one fought fair in my gang, or in any other gang that I ever ran up against. It was an honor to kill a man, and
