Three bounds beyond the
closing trap-jaws fetched us, pursued and pursuers, to the open camp
field; and here the devil's miracle was wrought. Out of the forest
fringe, out of the skirting of undergrowth, out of the very earth, as it
seemed, uprose a yelling mob of Cherokees--the detachment we had met in
the cavern returned in the very nick of time to cut us off from the
pursuit and to ring us in a whooping circle of death.
"Back to back, lad!" I shouted; and 'twas thus we met their onslaught.
In such a fray as that which followed 'tis the trivial things that leave
their mark upon the memory. For one, I recall the curious thrill of
master-might it gave me to feel the play of Jennifer's great shoulder
muscles against my back in his plying of the heavy claymore. For
another, I remember the sickening qualm I had when the warm blood of my
second--or mayhap 'twas the third--gushed out upon my sword hand, and I
remember, too, how the impaled one, driven in upon the blade by the
pressure of his fellows behind, would lay hold of the sharp steel and
try in the death throe to withdraw it.
But after that sickening qualm I recall only this; that I could not free
the sword for another thrust, and whilst I tugged and fought for space
they dragged me down and buried me, these fierce tribesmen, piling so
thick upon me that sight and sound and breath went out together, and I
was but an atom crushed to earth beneath the human avalanche.
XXIX
IN WHICH, HAVING DANCED, WE PAY THE PIPER
Measured by the sense which takes cognizance of pauses it seemed no more
than a moment between the stamping out of breath and its gasping
recovery.
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