The
last bleeding rays of the sunset flickered on the silver-mounted
rifles as they spat fire into the heat-quivering air.
All about the swimmers, waterspouts jetted up. Two men grunted,
flailed wild arms and sank, with the water about them tinged red as
the sunset. Another sank face downward, a moment, then with only one
arm, continued to ply for land, leaving a crimson trail behind.
None of the untouched Legionaries took any heed of this, or stopped
their furious swimming to see what damage had been done or to offer
help. Life was at stake. Every second in the breakers was big with
death. This was stern work, to be put through with speed. But the
faces of the swimming men grew hard to look upon.
The Master and Leclair were first to touch foot to the shelving
bottom, all churned up by the long cavalry-charges of the sea-horses,
and to drag themselves out of the smother. Rrisa and Bohannan
came next, then Enemark, and then the others--all save Beziers and
Daimamoto, French ace and Japanese surgeon, whose work was forever
at an end. Enemark, engineer and scientist, shot through the left
shoulder, was dragged ashore, strangling, by eager hands.
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