of joyful defiance burst from his throat as the bullets hissed over his head.  The battle had begun!  Another hour and the Mormon kingdom would be at the mercy of the avenging host from the mainland—­and Marion would be his own for ever!  He heard again the deep rumble of a heavy gun and from its sullen detonation he knew that it was fired from a ship at sea.  A nearer crash of returning fire turned him into a deserted street down which he ran wildly, on past the last houses of the town, until he came to the foot of a hill up which he climbed more slowly, panting like a winded animal.

From its top he could look down upon the scene of battle.  To the eastward stretched the harbor line with its rim of fires.  A glance showed him that the fight was not to center about these.  They had served their purpose, had forced the mainlanders to seek a landing farther down the coast.  The light of dawn had already begun to disperse the thick gloom of night and an eighth of a mile below Nathaniel the Mormon forces were creeping slowly along the shore.  The pale ghostly mistiness of the sea hung like a curtain between him and what was beyond, and even as he strained his eyes to catch a glimpse of the avenging fleet a vivid light leaped out of the white distance, followed by the thunder of a cannon.  He saw the head of the Mormon line falter.  In an instant it had been thrown into confusion.  A second shot from the sea—­a storm of cheering voices from out of that white chaos of mist—­and the Mormons fell back from the shore in a panic-stricken, fleeing mob.  Were those frightened cowards the fierce fighters of whom he had heard so much?  Were they the men who had made themselves masters of a kingdom in the land of their enemies—­whose mere name carried terror for a hundred miles along the coast?  He was stupefied, bewildered.  He made no effort to conceal himself as they approached the hill, but drew his pistol, ready to fire down upon them as they came.  Suddenly there was a change.  So quickly that he could scarcely believe his eyes the flying Mormons had disappeared.  Not a man was visible upon that narrow plain between the hill and the sea.  Like a huge covey of quail they had dropped to the ground, their rifles lost in that ghostly gloom through which the voices of the mainlanders came in fierce cries of triumph.  It was magnificent!  Even as the crushing truth of what it all meant came to him, the fighting blood in his veins leaped at the sight of it—­the pretended effect of the shots from sea, the sham confusion, the disorderly flight, the wonderful quickness and precision with which the rabble of armed men had thrown itself into ambush!