d the tables; the advantage of vision on which they had presumed
had been in an instant removed. They could see no more than he could
now. Besides, in the hours since his rescue, he had already learned to
find his way around the cabin.

And this was no half-darkness--that which descended as the candles
were struck down. It was the infinite, smothering gloom of an
underground cave in which no shadow could live, nor the sharpest outline
remain visible. Harold cursed in the blackness; as if in a continuation
of the leap he had made to upset the candles, Bill seized Virginia in
his strong arms. He thrust her to the floor and into the angle between
her bunk and the wall, the point that he instinctively realized would be
easiest to defend and safest from stray bullets. Then, widening his
arms, almost to the width of the little space between the table and the
wall, he lunged forward again.

Virginia's pistol was in Joe's hand by now, and he shot in Bill's
direction. Two spurts of yellow fire broke for an instant the utter
gloom. But there was no time for a third shot. He was the nearest of
the three attackers, and Bill's outstretched arms seized him. The
woodsman's muscles gave a mighty wrench.

His grasp was about Joe's chest at first, but with a great lurch he
slung the man's body out far enough so that he could loop his sinewy
arms about the man's knees. Joe was shifted in his arms as workmen are
sometimes snatched up by a mighty belt in a machine shop; he seemed
simply to snap in the remorseless grasp. Bill himself had no sensation
of his enemy's weight. He had him about the knees by now, Joe's body
thrust out almost straight from centrifugal force, and with a terrific
wrench of his mighty shoulders Bill hurled him against the wall.

It was well for his enemies that none of them were in the road of that
human missile. They would have taken no further part in the ensuing
battle. Joe's body crushed against the logs with a sound that was
strange and horrible in the utter darkness; the pistol spun from his
hand and rattled down'; then he fell with a crash to the floor. There
was no further movement from him thereafter. His neck had been broken
like a match. The odds were but two to one.

Harold had taken out his own revolver now and was shooting blindly in
the darkness. Ducking low, Bill leaped for him. In that leap there was
none of the gentle mercy with which he had dealt with him first, so long
ago