But before he could strike again, could batter in the base of the tough skull, a moan from Beatrice sent him to her aid.
“Oh, God!” he cried, and sank beside her on his knees.
On her forehead, as she lay gasping among the bushes, he saw an ugly welt.
“A stone? They've hit her with a stone! Killed her, perhaps?”
Kneeling there, up he snatched the revolver, and in a deadly fire he poured out the last spitting shots, pointblank in the faces of the crowding rabble.
Up he leaped. The rifle barrel flashed and glittered as he whirled it. Like a reaper, laying a clean swath behind him, the engineer mowed down a dozen of the beast-men.
Shrieks, grunts, snarls, mingled with his execrations.
Then fair into a jabbering ape-face he flung the bloodstained barrel. The face fell, faded, vanished, as hideous illusions fade in a dream.
And Stern, with a strength he never dreamed was his, caught up the fainting girl in his left arm, as easily as though she had been a child.
Still dragging the spear which pierced his right--his right that yet protected her a little--he ran.