"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.

"Aye, Jack; they have us hard and fast this time. I have been praying
you'd never come alive enough to feel the fire."

"We were taken together?" So much I dared ask.

"In the same onset. '