he
half-drowned mob, whose very strength now proved their principal
weakness.

"Give it 'em, b'ys: remember poor Sailor Bill!" shouted Seth, his blood
up to fever heat with passion, and the murderous spirit of revenge
strong in his heart. "Give 'em goss, an' let nary a one go back to tell
the story!"

"Steady, men, and fire low!" repeated Mr Rawlings.

And the miners mowed the redskins down by the score with regular volleys
from their repeating rifles, although twenty fresh Indians seemed to
spring up in the place of every one killed.

The fight was too severe to last long, and soon a diversion came.

As Rising Cloud, raising his tomahawk on high, and, leading the van of
his warriors, was bringing them on for a decisive charge, several sharp
discharges, as if from platoon firing, were heard in the rear of the
Indians.

Just then, a bullet from Ernest Wilton's rifle penetrated the chief's
brain, and he fell dead right across the earth rampart in front of the
young engineer. The platoon firing in the rear of the savages was again
repeated; the United States troops had evidently arrived to the rescue;
and, taken now between two fires, and disheartened by the fall of Rising
Cloud, the Sioux broke, and fled in a tumultuous mass towards the gorge
by which they had entered the valley of Minturne Creek.

The struggle over, the miners had time to count casualties, and see who
amongst their number had fallen in the fray.

Thanks to Ernest Wilton's breastwork, their losses had not been very
heavy.

Noah Webster was slightly wounded, and Black Harry badly; while the only
one killed outright was Tom Cannon, the whilom keen-sighted topman of
the _Susan Jane_, who would never sight wreck or sail more, for Sailor
Bill was only wounded, and not dead, after all.

Jasper, who had been hiding beneath the embankment beside the boy's
supposed lifeless body, had perceived signs of returning animation in
it, to which he immediately called the attention of Seth and also Mr
Rawlings, and the three were bending over the figure in a moment. Just
almost a year before they were bending over Sailor Bill in precisely the
same way in the cabin of the _Susan Jane_. The Indian's arrow had
ploughed under the skin of the boy's forehead nearly at the same place
that bore the scar of his former wound when he had been picked up at
sea, and could not have inflicted any dangerous injury; it was evidently
the shock of falling into the foaming to