I never could determine whether Holgate in that moment realized that all was up, and the end was come, and had carried things through with a swagger, or whether he had a hope of escape. Nothing showed in his voice or in his manner save extreme resolution and contemptuous indifference. These men he had misled and cheated were to him no more than brutes of the field, to be despised and ridiculed and browbeaten. At his words, indeed, the old habit of obedience asserted itself and the knot fell apart; as it did I saw Pierce with his revolver up, but Holgate did not move. He fired carefully and Pierce uttered a curse. Then another weapon barked, and Holgate moved a pace forwards. He fired again, and a man dropped. Two or more shots rang out, and the arch-mutineer lifted his left hand slowly to his breast.
"Bully for you, Pierce," he said, and fired yet once more.
The knot now had dissolved, and Gray ran in the gathering gloom a little way up the beach. He halted, and raising his weapon, fired. It was abominable. It may have been execution, but it was horribly like murder. As Gray fired, Holgate turned and put his hand to his shoulder. Immediately he let his last barrel go.
"Ha! That's done you, Pierce," he wheezed out. "By heavens, I thought I'd do for you!"
Crack! went Gray's pistol again from his rear, and he swung round; his weapon dropped, and he began to walk up the beach steadily towards me. In the blue gloom I could see his eyes stolidly black and furtive, and I could hear him puffing. He came within ten paces of me, and then stood still, and coughed in a sickening, inhuman way. Then he dropped and rolled heavily upon his back.
I had witnessed enough. Heaven knows we had no reason to show mercy to that criminal, but that last hopeless struggle against odds had enlisted some sympathy, and I had a feeling of nausea at the sight of that collapse. He must have fallen riddled with bullets. He had played for high stakes, had sacrificed many innocent lives, and had died the death of a dog. And there he would rest and rot in that remote and desert island.
I stole from my bush and crept upwards through the darkness. I had not gone a hundred yards before my ears were caught by a rustling on my left. Had I put up some animal? I came to a pause, and then there was a swift rush, and a man's figure broke through the undergrowth and disappeared across the slope of the hill. It was near dark, but I thought in that instant I recognised it as the figure of the little lawyer's clerk.
When I reached the cavern I found no sign of any one, and I was wondering what could have become of my companions when I heard a voice calling low through the gloaming:
"Dr. Phillimore!"
It was Alix. I sprang to her side and took her hands. Then I learnt that Legrand had decided, as a counsel of prudence, to occupy the second cavern on the northern slope, which he considered more private than that which we had found first.