“Quick! Show a light,” said the officer, standing up in the stern, pistol in hand, waiting for the man to rise.
A long narrow streak of light showed his figure not ten feet away from the beach. In another minute he would touch the shore.
“Stop!” cried the officer. “Swim another yard and you are a dead man.”
But the half-caste kept steadily on. Again Fenton's warning cry rang out, then he slowly raised his pistol and fired.
The shot told, for as the half-caste rose to his feet he staggered. And then he sped up the steep beach towards the thick scrub beyond.
As he panted along with the blood streaming from a bullet wound in his side, his sister's hand seized him by the arm.
“Jim, Jim!” she gasped, “only a little more, and we———”
And then half a dozen muskets flashed, and the two figures went down together and lay motionless on the bloodied sand.
Fenton jumped ashore and looked at them. “Both dead,” he said, pityingly, to old Swain, who with a number of natives now stood beside him.
“Aye, sir,” said the trader, brokenly, “both. An' now let me be with my dead.”