mann called loudly, "_meine
sehr geehrten Herrschaften!_ You must not be so exclusive. Many _guten_
friends haff I here with me. I haff been looking forward to this time
when they would meet you."

CHAPTER XIX

"_One for Each of Us_"

For men who had come from a world where wars and warfare were things of
the past, Chet, and Harkness had done effective work in preparing a
defense. The knoll made a height of land that any military man would
have chosen to defend, and the top of the gentle slope was protected by
the barricade.

On each side of the inverted U that ended at the water's edge an opening
had been left, where they passed in and out. But even here the wall had
been doubled and carried past itself: no place was left for an easy
assault, and on the open end the water was their protection.

Within the barricade, at about the center, the top of the knoll showed
an outcrop of rocks that rose high enough to be exposed to fire from
outside, but their little shelters were on nearly level ground at the
base of the rocks. The whole enclosure was some thirty feet in width and
perhaps a hundred feet long. Plenty to protect in case of an attack, as
Chet had remarked, but it could not have been much smaller and have done
its work effectively.

There was no one of the four white persons but gave unspoken thanks for
the barricade of sharp stakes, and even Towahg, although his fangs were
bared in an animal snarl at the sound of Schwartzmann's voice, must have
been glad to keep his bruised body out of sight behind the sheltering
wall.

No one of them replied to Schwartzmann's taunt. Harkness wrinkled his
eyes to stare through the bright sunlight and see the pistol in the
man's belt.

"He still has it," he said, half to himself: "he's got the gun. I was
rather hoping something might have happened to it. Just one gun; but he
has plenty of ammunition--"

"And we haven't--" It was Chet, now, who seemed thinking aloud. "But, I
wonder--can we bluff him a bit?"

* * * * *

He dropped behind the barricade and crawled into one of the huts to come
out with three extra pistols clutched in his hand. Empty, of course, but
they had brought them with them with some faint hope that some day the
ship might be reached and ammunition secured. Chet handed one to Diane
and another to Kreiss; the third weapon he stuck in his own belt where
it would show plainly. Harkness was already armed.

"Now