kept the count. The lepers
crowded into the open space before the caves. At first they were
frightened, but as the shells continued their flight overhead the leper
folk became reassured and began to admire the spectacle.

The two idiots shrieked with delight, prancing wild antics as each air-
tormenting shell went by. Koolau began to recover his confidence. No
damage was being done. Evidently they could not aim such large missiles
at such long range with the precision of a rifle.

But a change came over the situation. The shells began to fall short.
One burst below in the thicket by the knife-edge. Koolau remembered the
maid who lay there on watch, and ran down to see. The smoke was still
rising from the bushes when he crawled in. He was astounded. The
branches were splintered and broken. Where the girl had lain was a hole
in the ground. The girl herself was in shattered fragments. The shell
had burst right on her.

First peering out to make sure no soldiers were attempting the passage,
Koolau started back on the run for the caves. All the time the shells
were moaning, whining, screaming by, and the valley was rumbling and
reverberating with the explosions. As he came in sight of the caves, he
saw the two idiots cavorting about, clutching each other's hands with
their stumps of fingers. Even as he ran, Koolau saw a spout of black
smoke rise from the ground, near to the idiots. They were flung apart
bodily by the explosion. One lay motionless, but the other was dragging
himself by his hands toward the cave. His legs trailed out helplessly
behind him, while the blood was pouring from his body. He seemed bathed
in blood, and as he crawled he cried like a little dog. The rest of the
lepers, with the exception of Kapahei, had fled into the caves.

"Seventeen," said Kapahei. "Eighteen," he added.

This last shell had fairly entered into one of the caves. The explosion
caused the caves to empty. But from the particular cave no one emerged.
Koolau crept in through the pungent, acrid smoke. Four bodies,
frightfully mangled, lay about. One of them was the sightless woman
whose tears till now had never ceased.

Outside, Koolau found his people in a panic and already beginning to
climb the goat-trail that led out of the gorge and on among the jumbled
heights and chasms. The wounded idiot, whining feebly and dragging
himself along on the ground by his hands, was trying to follow. But at
the first p