Then chance was my friend once more. As I writhed and staggered in my desperate efforts to shake off his terrible grip, and we tossed and swayed in that grim, wild struggle, he caught his foot and down we went crash to the ground, he undermost. His grip relaxed for the instant, and with a frantic effort I thrust myself free from him, and scrambling up jumped out of his reach.
In a second I had the drop on him; and when he regained his feet and faced me with a heavy club he had picked up, he was looking down the barrel that meant death.
If I hadn’t been a chicken-hearted fool I should have shot him down on the spot; but instead I offered him his life; and then, as if in contempt of my weakness, Fortune deserted me.
“Throw your hands up, or I’ll put a bullet into you,” I cried.
He stood a second as if weighing the chances, and then from outside came the noise of trouble. The crash of breaking wood, a cry from the girl, the savage growl of Chris, and an angry shout in Karasch’s deep voice.
It was almost the last thing I knew of that fight.
Maddened by the sounds I sprang to rush from the tent, when the wounded man, resourceful daredevil as he was, made his last effort and flung his rug right at my face.
The last thing I saw was the leader springing toward me with his uplifted club; I fired at him; and the same moment a blow on the head finished the fight, and I went down stunned and senseless.
CHAPTER VII.
ESCAPE.
My first conscious sensation after the blow felled me was as singular as it was unpleasant. I seemed to be nothing but one huge head on which a hundred invisible smiths were hammering with quick, rhythmic blows, each of which gave me such excruciating pain that I yearned to cry out to the impish torturers to cease, but was tongue-tied and helpless.