Rising slowly and stretching himself as if nothing unusual had occurred, Rawlins strolled off towards; the landing place while Mr. Pauling kept Jules and his friends busy with questions and suggesting plans by which they could aid the Americans.
When the negroes discovered that Mr. Pauling and his friends were looking for the murderers and would make them prisoners if found, they were highly delighted, and Jules assented instantly to guiding the Americans to the cave and the submarine and offered to bring a number of his men along to help.
They were still discussing these plans and Rawlins had almost reached the edge of the clearing when a shot rang out, there was a savage yell, and the next moment Smernoff appeared at the edge of the trees, waving a pistol in his hand and backing away as if from an unseen assailant.
The next instant, he leveled his pistol, there was a flash, another report and then, before the wondering onlookers could move, before they could utter a cry, a figure hurled itself from behind a tree. There was a flash of descending steel, a dull thud, and the Russian plunged forward on the ground. Standing over him, whirling his bloodstained machete about his head and yelling in fiendish glee was a huge gaunt negro.
With two bounds Rawlins was upon the man from behind; before another blow could fall he had pinioned his arms in a vise-like grip and as the others raced towards the scene of the tragedy Rawlins struggled and strained to wrest the deadly machete from the negro’s grasp.
Mr. Pauling was the first to reach Smernoff’s side. That the fellow was mortally wounded was evident at a glance. Across neck and shoulder extended a deep, gaping gash that had almost severed the head, but the man was still breathing and Mr. Pauling bent over him.
Suddenly the Russian’s piglike eyes opened and into them flashed a look of such malignant, unspeakable hatred that Mr. Pauling drew back. As he did so, the gasping, dying man hissed a curse between his blood-covered lips, and with a last superhuman effort drew up his arm, aimed the pistol at Mr. Pauling’s head and pulling the trigger dropped back dead. So close to Mr. Pauling’s face was the weapon that the blast of blazing powder singed his hair and filled his eyes with acrid, smarting smoke and burnt powder and with a hoarse, choking cry he reeled backward. But before the horror-stricken boys could cry out he was upon his feet, wiping his eyes, coughing, shaken, but unhurt. Death had missed him by the fraction of an inch, by a split second. Smernoff had waited a thousandth of a second too long to wreak his treachery; death had robbed him of his vengeance; life had flown from him at the very instant he had pressed the trigger and he had paid his debt without adding another to his long list of crimes.
It had all happened in the twinkling of an eye. From the moment when Smernoff’s first shot had startled them until he had breathed his last, not half a minute had elapsed and now all was over. The negro who had settled his score with the murderer of his family no longer resisted Rawlins, but stood regarding the mutilated body of the Russian with much the same expression that a hunter might wear when he has brought down a tiger or a lion. Sam was trying to convince Jules that Smernoff was a prisoner who had escaped; Bancroft and the boys were hovering about Mr. Pauling striving to make sure that he was not even scratched; and Rawlins was explaining matters to the quartermaster who had come from the boat on the run at sound of the shots.
“I’ll say he was a dirty skunk!” declared Rawlins, “And I thought he was straight and reformed. Guess once a ‘red’ always a ‘red.’ Blamed if I ain’t sorry I didn’t let him drift. By glory! for all we know he’s been tipping his friends off by radio or something. Well, that’s that for him.”
Then, turning towards the negro executioner, he gave that individual the surprise of his life by slapping him heartily on the back.