The hole was opened through the floor, and Ford was on his stomach with his face and an arm in the aperture, fishing desperately for the loop in the fuse.  It was his success, his sudden drawing of the loop up into the car, that had shocked Adair out of his pose.  Brissac was ready with the ax, and the instant the loop appeared it was severed, the burning end cast off, and the other end, with the bomb attached, was safely drawn up into the car.

The perspiration was running from Ford’s face in streams when he had the engine of death securely in his hands.

“Take it, Roy,” he gasped.  “Drop it into the water-cooler.  That will be the safest place for it if they fall back on the gun-play.”

As if his word had evoked it, a storm of rifle bullets swept through the car, smashing windows, breaking the remaining gas globes and splintering the wood-work.  Again and again the flashes leaped out of the surrounding shadows and the air was sibilant with whining missiles.

Brissac had the infernal machine:  at first he fell upon it and covered it with his body; afterward he crawled with it into the nearest state-room and muffled it in a roll of berth mattresses.

When the storm ceased, as suddenly as it had begun, they crept together in the vestibule farthest from the commissary lead-hurling volcano to count the casualties.

There was none; not even a bullet score or a splinter-wound to show for the hot bombardment, though the side of the Nadia facing the commissary was riddled.

“I’m believing all I’ve ever read about its taking a hundred pounds of lead to kill one man in a war battle,” said the New Yorker, grimly humorous to the last.  “How do you two C. E.’s account for it?”

“We don’t,” said Ford shortly.  “We’re merely thankful that all humankind habitually shoots high when it’s excited or in a hurry.”

[Illustration:  Brissac hurled the skillet like a clumsy discus]

Then he sprang afoot, secured his ax, and sent Brissac to the pantry to rummage for other weapons.  “A rush is the next thing in order,” he suggested; and they prepared as they could to meet it.

But the rush did not come.  Instead of it, one man, carrying what appeared to be a bundle of dripping rags, came cautiously into the open and approached the shattered car.  The night wind sweeping down from the upper valley was with him, and the pungent odor of kerosene was wafted to and through the broken windows.

“Oho!” said Adair.  “Having safely shot you dead or disabled, they are now going to give you Christian burial, Ford.  Also, they will comfortably obliterate all the marks and scars of this pleasant evening’s diversion.  How near shall I let him come before I squander one of the two remaining cartridges on him?”