It was familiar enough to island ears, and the convict answered readily:
"A friend!"
"Several friends, it would seem," laughed a voice. "Let us see who these friends are."
Luckily, in response to De Sylva's sibilant order, most of the Andromeda's crew were hidden by the scrub from which they were about to emerge.
The soldiers rose, and strolled nearer leisurely.
"Now!" shouted De Sylva, leaping forward.
There was a wild scurry, two or three shots were fired, and Hozier found himself on the ground gripping the throat of a bronzed man whom he had shoved backward with a thrust, for he had no time to swing his stake for a blow. He was aware of a pair of black eyes that glared up at him horribly in the moonlight, of white teeth that shone under long moustachios of peculiarly warlike aspect, but he felt the man was as putty in his hands, and his fingers relaxed their pressure.
He looked around. The fight was ended almost as soon as it began. The soldiers, six in all, were on their backs in the roadway. Two of them were dead. The Italian sailor had been shot through the body, and was twisting in his last agony.
The bloodshed was bad enough, but those shots were worse. They would set the island in an uproar. The reports would be heard in town, citadel, and fort, and the troops would now be on the qui vive. But De Sylva was a man of resource.
"Strip the prisoners!" he cried. "Take their arms and ammunition, but bind them back to back with their belts."