By the time the cask was emptied, the tent was saturated.  Then this wretch passed the tent yet once more, and scattered a small quantity of oil to make the flame more durable and deadly.

“Now it is my turn,” whispered brutus.  “I thought it would never come.”

What is that figure crouching and crawling about a hundred yards to windward?  It is the caitiff, Crawley, who, after peremptorily declining to have anything to do with this hellish act, has crept furtively after them, partly to play the spy on them, for he suspects they will lie to him about the gold, partly urged by curiosity.  He could see nothing at that distance but the dark body of mephistopheles passing at intervals between him and the white tent.

He shivered with cold and terror at the crime about to be done, and quivered with impatience that it was so long a-doing.

The assassins now divided their force. mephistopheles took his station to leeward of the tent; brutus to windward.

Crawley saw a sudden spark upon the ground; it was brutus striking a lucifer match against his heel.  With this he lighted a piece of tow, and running along the tent he left a line of fire behind him, and awaited the result, his cutlass griped in his hand and his teeth clinched.

Crawley saw that line of fire come and then creep and then rise and then roar, and shoot up into a great column of fire thirty feet high, roaring and blazing, and turning night into day all round.  Simultaneously with this tremendous burst of fire and light, which startled Crawley by bringing him in a moment into broad daylight, he saw rise from the earth a black figure with a fiendish face.

At this awful sight the conscience-stricken wretch fell flat and tried to work into the soil like a worm.  Nor did he recover any portion of his presence of mind till he heard a shrill whoop, savage and soul-chilling, but mortal, and, looking up, saw Kalingalunga go bounding down upon brutus with gigantic leaps, his tomahawk whirling.

Crawley cowered like a hare and watched. brutus, surprised but not dismayed, wheeled round and faced the savage, cutlass in hand.  He parried a fierce blow of the tomahawk, and with his left fist struck Kalingalunga on the temple, and knocked him backward half a dozen yards.  The elastic savage recovered himself and danced like a fiend round brutus in the red light of the blazing tent.

Warned by that strange blow, straight from the armpit, a blow entirely new to him, he came on with more deadly caution, eyes and teeth budelights, and brutus felt a chill for a moment, but it speedily turned to rage.  Now as the combatants each prepared to strike again, screams suddenly issued from the other side the tent, so wild, despairing, and unnatural as to suspend their arms for a moment.  They heard but saw nothing, only the savage heart of brutus found time to exult—­his enemies were perishing.  But Crawley saw as well