Bounding like a jaguar, he hurled himself into the thick of the fight. This contest of a single man against a swarm of enemies had something grand and startling about it. Shaw, as if under the influence of a horrible nightmare, struggled in vain against the incessantly renewed cloud of foemen; in him every feeling of self had vanished, he no longer reflected, his life had become entirely physical, his movements were automatic, his arms rose and fell with the rigid regularity of a pendulum.
He had managed, without knowing how, to clear the fortifications of the village; at a few paces from him the Gila flowed silently on, and appeared to him in the moonlight like an immense silver ribbon. Could he reach the river, he was saved; but there is a limit which human strength, however great it may be, cannot go beyond, and Shaw felt that he was reaching this limit.
He took an anxious glance around; Apaches hemmed him in on all sides! He uttered a sigh, for he thought that he was about to die. At this solemn moment, when all was about to fail him, a final shriek burst from his chest. A cry of agony and despair, of terrifying meaning, and re-echoed for a second far and wide, so that it drowned all the battle sounds; it was the parting protest of a man who at length confesses himself conquered by fatality, and who, before succumbing, summons his fellow men to his aid, or implores the succour of Heaven.
A cry answered his! Shaw, astonished, unable to count on a miracle, as his friends were too far off and themselves too busy to help him, fancied himself the victim of a dream or hallucination; still, collecting all his strength, feeling hope well up again in his heart, he gave vent to a more startling shout than the former.
"Courage!"
This time, it was not echo that answered him.
Courage! This word alone was borne on the wings of the wind, weak as a sigh, and, in spite of the horrible yells of the Apaches, was distinctly heard by Shaw.
In moments of frenzy, or when a man is at bay, the senses acquire a perfection for which it is impossible otherwise to account. Like the giant Antæus, Shaw drew himself up, and seemed restored to that life which was on the point of leaving him. He redoubled his blows on his innumerable enemies, and at length succeeded in breaking through the barrier they opposed to him.
Several horsemen appeared galloping over the plain; shots illumined the darkness with their transient flash, and men, or rather demons, rushed suddenly on the throng of the Apaches, and commenced a frightful carnage. The redskins, surprised by their unexpected attack, rushed toward the village, uttering yells of terror: their prey had escaped them.
Shaw had fought bravely and firm as a rock up to the last moment; but when his enemies disappeared, he sank to the ground in a state of unconsciousness.