a big gun, from which
at one time he shot many small bullets. And so, behold!"

Ounenk pointed to his ear, neatly pierced by a buckshot.

"But I, Ounenk, drove my spear through his back from behind. And in
such fashion, one way and another, did we kill them all--all save the
head man. And him we were about, many of us, and he was alone, when he
made a great cry and broke through us, five or six dragging upon him,
and ran down inside the ship. And then, when the wealth of the
ship was ours, and only the head man down below whom we would kill
presently, why then there was a sound as of all the guns in the
world--a mighty sound! And like a bird I rose up in the air, and the
living Mandell Folk, and the dead Sunlanders, the little kayaks, the
big ship, the guns, the wealth--everything rose up in the air. So I
say, I, Ounenk, who tell the tale, am the only one left."

A great silence fell upon the assemblage. Tyee looked at Aab-Waak with
awe-struck eyes, but forbore to speak. Even the women were too stunned
to wail the dead.

Ounenk looked about him with pride. "I, only, am left," he repeated.

But at that instant a rifle cracked from Bill-Man's barricade, and
there was a sharp spat and thud on the chest of Ounenk. He swayed
backward and came forward again, a look of startled surprise on his
face. He gasped, and his lips writhed in a grim smile. There was a
shrinking together of the shoulders and a bending of the knees. He
shook himself, as might a drowsing man, and straightened up. But the
shrinking and bending began again, and he sank down slowly, quite
slowly, to the ground.

It was a clean mile from the pit of the Sunlanders, and death had
spanned it. A great cry of rage went up, and in it there was much of
blood-vengeance, much of the unreasoned ferocity of the brute. Tyee
and Aab-Waak tried to hold the Mandell Folk back, were thrust aside,
and could only turn and watch the mad charge. But no shots came
from the Sunlanders, and ere half the distance was covered, many,
affrighted by the mysterious silence of the pit, halted and waited.
The wilder spirits bore on, and when they had cut the remaining
distance in half, the pit still showed no sign of life. At two hundred
yards they slowed down and bunched; at one hundred, they stopped, a
score of them, suspicious, and conferred together.

Then a wreath of smoke crowned the barricade, and they scattered like
a handful of pebbles thrown at random. Four went down, and