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As the first streak of the gray dawn came in through the bare windows, four of our gang dressed and deliberately marched out of the camp never to return. The first number in the programme of a "mucker's" toilet is to adjust his cap with his lamp in it, trimmed and burning. The second is to light his pipe; then he dresses.
Springing to Byrne's side she whipped Theriere's revolver from his belt, where it reposed about the fallen mucker's hips, and with it turned like a tigress upon the youth. "Quick!" she cried. "Tell them to go back that I shall kill you if they come closer."
Before the man's companions realized what had happened Billy had possessed himself of the fallen club and struck one of them a blinding, staggering blow across the eyes. Then number three pulled his gun and fired point-blank at Billy. The bullet tore through the mucker's left shoulder.
He had the memory, though, of the girl's arms about his neck, and her dear lips crushed to his for a brief instant, and her words ah, those words! They would ring in Billy's head forever: "I love you, Billy, for what you ARE." And a sudden resolve came into the mucker's mind as he whispered those words over and over again to himself. "I can't have her," he said.
As the mucker rushed upward toward him Mallory had all the advantage of position and preparedness, and had he done what Billy Byrne would have done under like circumstances he would have planted a kick in the midst of the mucker's facial beauties with all the power and weight and energy at his command; but Billy Mallory could no more have perpetrated a cowardly trick such as this than he could have struck a woman.
Once when Theriere happened to glance in his direction the Frenchman mentally ascribed the mucker's seeming lethargy to the paralysis of abject cowardice. "The fellow is in a blue funk," thought the second mate; "I did not misjudge him like all his kind he is a coward at heart." Then a great wave came, following unexpectedly close upon the heels of a lesser one.
Billy opened his eyes. Seven. Billy sat up. Eight. The meaning of that monotonous count finally percolated to the mucker's numbed perceptive faculties. He was being counted out! Nine! Like a flash he was on his feet. He had forgotten the crowd. Rage cool, calculating rage possessed him not the feverish, hysterical variety that takes its victim's brains away.
The crack of the mucker's revolver, growing fainter and fainter, as they drew away from the scene of conflict, apprised the men that their rescuer still lived. After a time the distant reports ceased. The two walked on in silence for a few minutes. "He's gone," whispered Mallory. Anthony Harding made no response. They did not hear any further firing behind them. On and on they trudged.
All thoughts of revenge for the mucker's former assault upon him were dropped, and he now looked upon the man as a true friend and ally. For three days the Halfmoon plunged helplessly upon the storm-wracked surface of the mad sea.
And so the mucker's education commenced, and as there was little else for the two to do it progressed rapidly, for once started the man grew keenly interested, spurred on by the evident pleasure which his self-appointed tutor took in his progress further it meant just so much more of close companionship with her.
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