Now you may mark this as you will; that whilst the devil hath need of his bond-servant he will come between with a miracle if need be to keep the villain breath of life in his vassal.  Three bounds beyond the closing trap-jaws fetched us, pursued and pursuers, to the open camp field; and here the devil’s miracle was wrought.  Out of the forest fringe, out of the skirting of undergrowth, out of the very earth, as it seemed, uprose a yelling mob of Cherokees—­the detachment we had met in the cavern returned in the very nick of time to cut us off from the pursuit and to ring us in a whooping circle of death.

“Back to back, lad!” I shouted; and ’twas thus we met their onslaught.

In such a fray as that which followed ’tis the trivial things that leave their mark upon the memory.  For one, I recall the curious thrill of master-might it gave me to feel the play of Jennifer’s great shoulder muscles against my back in his plying of the heavy claymore.  For another, I remember the sickening qualm I had when the warm blood of my second—­or mayhap ’twas the third—­gushed out upon my sword hand, and I remember, too, how the impaled one, driven in upon the blade by the pressure of his fellows behind, would lay hold of the sharp steel and try in the death throe to withdraw it.

But after that sickening qualm I recall only this; that I could not free the sword for another thrust, and whilst I tugged and fought for space they dragged me down and buried me, these fierce tribesmen, piling so thick upon me that sight and sound and breath went out together, and I was but an atom crushed to earth beneath the human avalanche.

XXIX

IN WHICH, HAVING DANCED, WE PAY THE PIPER

Measured by the sense which takes cognizance of pauses it seemed no more than a moment between the stamping out of breath and its gasping recovery.  But in the interval the scene had shifted from the open savanna to a thinly set grove of oaks with the stream brawling through the midst.

To the biggest of the trees I was tightly bound; and a little way apart a fire, newly kindled, smoked and blazed up fitfully.  By the light of the fire a good score of the Cherokees were gathering deadfalls and dry branches to heap beside me; and from the camp below, the Indian lodges of which were in plain view beyond the intervening horse meadow, other savages were hurrying to join the wood carriers.

So far as these hasting preliminaries applied to me, their meaning was not difficult to read.  I was to be burned at the stake in proper savage fashion.  But Richard Jennifer—­what had become of him?  A sound, half sigh, half groan, told me where to look.  Hard by, bound to a tree as I was, and so near that with a free hand I could have touched him, was my poor lad.

“Dick!” I cried.

He turned his head as the close-drawn thongs permitted and gave me a smile as loving-tender as a woman’s.