He challenged. San Benavides answered, but his voice was shrill and unofficer-like.
The engines were started. A man leaped to the wharf. He was in the act of casting a mooring rope off a fixed capstan when De Sylva shot him between the shoulder-blades.
"On board, all of you!" shrieked the ex-President in a frenzy.
"At 'em, boys!" gasped Coke, though scarce able to stagger another foot.
The men needed no bidding. Sheets of flame leaped from the vessel's deck as the soldiers seized their rifles and fired point-blank at these mysterious assailants who spoke in a foreign language. But flame alone could not stop that desperate attack. Some fell, but the survivors sprang at the Brazilians like famished wolves on their prey. There was no more shooting. Men grappled and fell, some into the water, others on deck, or they sprawled over the hatch and wrought in frantic struggle in the narrow cabin. The fight did not last many seconds. An engineer, finding a lever and throttle valve, roared to a sailor to take the wheel, and already the launch was curving seaward when Hozier shouted:
"Where is Marcel?"
"Lyin' dead on the wharf," said Watts.
"Are you certain?"
"He was alongside me, an' 'e threw is 'ands up, an' dropped like a shot rabbit."
"Then who has gone for Miss Yorke?"