when he gave the cry and we fell upon them.  Never was there such a fight, and never such fighters.  Half did we kill in the quickness of surprise, but the half that was left became as devils, and they multiplied themselves, and everywhere they fought like devils.  Three put their backs against the mast of the ship, and we ringed them with our dead before they died.  And some got guns and shot with both eyes wide open, and very quick and sure.  And one got a big gun, from which at one time he shot many small bullets.  And so, behold!”

Ounenk pointed to his ear, neatly pierced by a buckshot.

“But I, Ounenk, drove my spear through his back from behind.  And in such fashion, one way and another, did we kill them all—­all save the head man.  And him we were about, many of us, and he was alone, when he made a great cry and broke through us, five or six dragging upon him, and ran down inside the ship.  And then, when the wealth of the ship was ours, and only the head man down below whom we would kill presently, why then there was a sound as of all the guns in the world—­a mighty sound!  And like a bird I rose up in the air, and the living Mandell Folk, and the dead Sunlanders, the little kayaks, the big ship, the guns, the wealth—­everything rose up in the air.  So I say, I, Ounenk, who tell the tale, am the only one left.”

A great silence fell upon the assemblage.  Tyee looked at Aab-Waak with awe-struck eyes, but forbore to speak.  Even the women were too stunned to wail the dead.

Ounenk looked about him with pride.  “I, only, am left,” he repeated.

But at that instant a rifle cracked from Bill-Man’s barricade, and there was a sharp spat and thud on the chest of Ounenk.  He swayed backward and came forward again, a look of startled surprise on his face.  He gasped, and his lips writhed in a grim smile.  There was a shrinking together of the shoulders and a bending of the knees.  He shook himself, as might a drowsing man, and straightened up.  But the shrinking and bending began again, and he sank down slowly, quite slowly, to the ground.

It was a clean mile from the pit of the Sunlanders, and death had spanned it.  A great cry of rage went up, and in it there was much of blood-vengeance, much of the unreasoned ferocity of the brute.  Tyee and Aab-Waak tried to hold the Mandell Folk back, were thrust aside, and could only turn and watch the mad charge.  But no shots came from the Sunlanders, and ere half the distance was covered, many, affrighted by the mysterious silence of the pit, halted and waited.  The wilder spirits bore on, and when they had cut the remaining distance in half, the pit still showed no sign of life.  At two hundred yards they slowed down and bunched; at one hundred, they stopped, a score of them, suspicious, and conferred together.