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Updated: June 24, 2025
"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed the Frenchman, reverting to his mother tongue as he never did except under the stress of great excitement. "Who done it?" queried Red Sanders, looking suspiciously at the mucker. "Head-hunters," said Theriere. "God! What an awful fate for that poor girl!" Billy Byrne went white. "Yeh don't mean dat dey've lopped off her block?" he whispered in an awed voice.
Ward was quick to recognize the turn events had taken, and to see that it gave Theriere the balance of power, with two guns and nine men in his party against their two guns and seven men.
What can we do against the savages of this awful island if we divide our forces? They will pick us off a few at a time just as they picked off Miller and Swenson, Theriere and Byrne. We ought to tell Ward about it, and call this foolish battle off." "Now you're talkin'," cried Bony Sawyer.
Sure enough, before Byrne returned with Miller and Swenson, Theriere could bear the snores of the first mate. On the first trip to the cliff top eight men carried heavy burdens, Divine alone remaining to guard Barbara Harding. The second trip was made with equal dispatch and safety. No sound or movement came from the camp of the enemy, other than that of sleeping men.
Billy Byrne, the arduous labor of making sail over for the time, was devoting his energies to the task of piecing out from what Theriere had told him and what he had overheard outside the skipper's cabin some sort of explanation of the work ahead. As he pondered Theriere's proposition he saw the wisdom of it. It would give those interested a larger amount of the booty for their share.
"I don't belong," said the mucker gruffly. "Wouldn't you rather belong?" insisted the girl. All his life Billy had looked with contempt upon the hated, pusillanimous highbrows, and now to be asked if he would not rather be one! It was unthinkable, and yet, strange to relate, he realized an odd longing to be like Theriere, and Billy Mallory; yes, in some respects like Divine, even.
What would have happened had Skipper Simms completed the threatening maneuver he had undertaken can never be known, for at this moment Theriere pushed his way through the circle of men who were interested spectators of the impending tragedy. "What's up, sir?" he asked of Simms. "Anything that I can help you with?" "Oh!" exclaimed the skipper; "so you ain't dead after all, eh?
Divine, feeling that immediate danger from bullets was past, raised his head above the edge of the earthwork. "We have something to communicate, Mr. Ward," he called. "Spit it out, then; I'm a-listenin'," called back the mate. "Miss Harding, Mr. Theriere, Byrne, Miller, and Swenson have been captured and killed by native head-hunters," said Divine.
He has promised to help and protect me." A deep flush mounted to the man's neck and face. He did not turn about to face the girl he had so grievously wronged for the life of him he could not have met her eyes. Slowly he turned, and with gaze bent upon the ground walked quickly toward Theriere.
In a moment it would engulf him, and then rush on across him to tear Theriere from the deck and hurl him beyond the ship into the tumbling, watery, chaos of the sea. The mucker saw all this, and in the instant he launched himself toward the man for whom he had no use, whose kind he hated, reaching him as the great wave broke over them, crushing them to the deck, choking and blinding them.
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