“Here,” she continued, “give me your hand. I'm as weak as a kitten.” As Wilbur helped her to her feet, she put her hand to her forehead, where his knuckles had left their mark, and frowned at him, but not ill-naturedly.
“Next time you do that,” she said, “use a rock or a belaying-pin, or something that won't hurt—not your fist, mate.” She looked at him admiringly. “What a two-fisted, brawny dray-horse it is! I told you I was stronger than most men, didn't I? But I'm the weaker of us two, and that's a fact. You've beaten, mate—I admit it; you've conquered me, and,” she continued, smiling again and shaking him by the shoulder—“and, mate, do you know, I love you for it.”
XI. A CHANGE IN LEADERS
“Well,” exclaimed Wilbur at length, the excitement of the fight returning upon him. “We have plenty to do yet. Come on, Moran.”
It was no longer Moran who took the initiative—who was the leader. The brief fight upon the shore had changed all that. It was Wilbur who was now the master, it was Wilbur who was aggressive. He had known what it meant to kill. He was no longer afraid of anything, no longer hesitating. He had felt a sudden quadrupling of all his strength, moral and physical.
All that was strong and virile and brutal in him seemed to harden and stiffen in the moment after he had seen the beach-comber collapse limply on the sand under the last strong knife-blow; and a sense of triumph, of boundless self-confidence, leaped within him, so that he shouted aloud in a very excess of exhilaration; and snatching up a heavy cutting-in spade, that had been dropped in the fight near the burning cabin, tossed it high into the air, catching it again as it descended, like any exultant savage.
“Come on!” he cried to Moran; “where are the beach-combers gone? I'm going to get one more before the show is over.”
The two passed out of the zone of smoke, and reached the other side of the burning cabin just in time to see the last of the struggle. The whole affair had not taken more than a quarter of an hour. In the end the beach-combers had been beaten. Four had fled into the waste of sand and sage that lay back of the shore, and had not been pursued. A fifth had been almost hamstrung by one of the “Bertha's” coolies, and had given himself up. A sixth, squealing and shrieking like a tiger-cat, had been made prisoner; and Wilbur himself had accounted for the seventh.
As Wilbur and Moran came around the cabin they saw the “Bertha Millner's” Chinamen in a group, not far from the water's edge, reassembled after the fight—panting and bloody, some of them bare to the belt, their weapons still in their hands. Here and there was a bandaged arm or head; but their number was complete—or no, was it complete?