Ridgeway, cutting viciously away at the black bodies as they plunged against the wall behind which they stood, felt the spears crash against his shield, heard them hiss past, saw them penetrate the earthworks all about him.  At another time he would have wondered how he and his men could hope to withstand such an onslaught.  One thing he did have time to observe, and that was the surprise, consternation, even fear that came into the enraged faces of the assaulting savages when they saw him plainly.  They were looking for the first time on the face of a white man—­the new god of their enemies.

A sudden change in the tide of battle, though brief, transferred the brunt of conflict to another quarter.  A withering rain of spears struck the enemy on the flank and rear, and down from the opposite hilltop rushed the mob that had formed the other boulder squad at the beginning of the fight, but who had done nothing after the first charge of the Oolooz men up the hill.  They threw themselves upon the enemy and were soon lost in the boiling mass.  Gaining fresh courage and a renewed viciousness, the men in the trenches forsook the shelter and poured into the open, Hugh being powerless to check them.

“It is all over,” groaned he, when he saw his crazy forces jump into the very centre of the seething mass.  With a white man’s shrewdness he remained behind the friendly breastworks, a dozen of his warriors fighting by his side.  Repeated rushes against his position were broken by the desperate resistance of this small company.  Hugh’s heavy sword was dripping with blood; it had beaten in the skull of many a foe, had been driven beneath the shields and through the bodies of others.  To him it seemed hours instead of minutes since the battle began; his arm was growing tired, his brain was whirling, his body was dripping with perspiration.  Still his blood boiled and surged with savage enjoyment; he was now yelling with the same frenzy that filled the wild men; pure delight grew out of the fall of every opponent that went down under his sword.

At last the Oolooz leader, a blood-covered savage as large as Pootoo, led his men up to the breastworks, driving the defenders into the trenches and down the gentle slope.  Triumph was theirs apparently, and their yelling was full of it.  But inch by inch Pootoo fought them back.  Once the king looked helplessly at Hugh, as if praying for him as a god to exert his influence in the unequal struggle.  That glance was one of entreaty, surprise, but Hugh could also see disgust in it.  It stung him strangely.

Although he had fought and killed more men than any one on either side, perhaps, he had not gone forth from behind the breastworks; he was not out in the thick of it.  With a yell of encouragement to the men, he flung himself over the little wall, alighting on the soft body of a corpse.  With his supporters at his heels he dashed to the king’s side.  Inside of two minutes he was struck in the leg by a