Bursts of flame from the cabin door stretched them, motionless upon the deck. The sailors — whose shots had been wild and meaningless — were firing again. The bullets from their revolvers smashed against the sides of the cabin.
Then came another flare. It showed a new sight. The Shadow was in the center of the deck. Swinging rapidly, to and fro, his automatics were discharging leaden messengers of death.
The forms of maddened sailors were visible in the light; but their hasty shots could not seem to strike that strange target — the crouching form that bore the semblance of Foy. From the decks, the range was too great for ordinary revolver aim.
But The Shadow’s automatics mocked the distance. Bullets, coming from those tongue-flamed muzzles found the marks toward which they were directed. Sailors with upraised revolvers fell before they could fire.
In that brief interval, The Shadow loosed his entire load of deadly missiles. The automatics were empty. But when another flare came from an upper deck, it revealed two gleaming revolvers in those mighty hands — weapons which The Shadow had taken from the men whom he had conquered below!
NOW the aim of both those guns was directed toward a single spot. While bullets sank into the deck beside his weaving body, The Shadow had seen a group of faces peering from a rail upon a high-pitched deck. There, another flare was being lighted.
The Shadow’s revolvers spoke their message. Two men, rising, toppled from the rail of the high deck. One, clutching an object on the rail, fell crashing to the deck below. Beside him came a hissing, burning flare. It scattered upon the deck. Its flaming portions were scattered about in all directions.
Another flare was starting from that same high rail. The man who had lighted it, dropped suddenly, as The Shadow spotted him for death. The second flare fell like a sudden meteor. Its fragments scattered also — some bounding through the door of an open cabin.
Unable to withstand those inhuman shots, startled sailors sprang from their hiding places. Stumbling over the bodies of their fallen comrades, they leaped for the places which were farthest from the deadly bullets.
Like monkeys, they scrambled up the masts of the towering junk, and pressed themselves upon sail-furled rigging. A mocking laugh came from the lone man on the deck. The laugh of The Shadow, it reached the ears of those cringing men whose only refuge had been flight.