She shook her head. "He is dead. They will all be dead directly, my cousin and all. My father cannot help me, and he who lies here cannot help me. I will not be taken alive by these devils, and I have no knife. Will you kill me?"
"My God!"
"Quick!" she said in the same low, steady tones. "They are coming; they will beat us down in a moment. Kill me!"
For answer Landless raised his voice until it rang high above the uproar, and arrested the attention of the combatants on both sides. "Fight with a will, men," he cried, "for help is at hand! Do you not hear the hoofs of the horses?"
"By God! you are right!" cried the Colonel, suddenly struggling to his feet. "Hold out, men! Anthony Nash reached Rosemead, and has brought us aid!"
"The dog priest!" the mulatto cried fiercely to Trail. "Was he here? Then they have sent for help, and Mother of God! it is here!"
"And coming at the planter's pace," answered Trail. "They will be upon us before we reach the boats."
The mulatto glanced at the friend with whom he had fled the Indies with a sinister smile. "Ay," he muttered to himself. "They will be upon us indeed, before we reach the boats, wherefore Luiz Sebastian goes not to turn pirate this time. He throws in his lot with the Ricahecrians whose canoes are close at hand in the inlet that winds into the Pamunkey. They are very swift, and in the Blue Mountains there is safety. But one thing first."
He gave a shrill and peculiar whistle which brought to him half a dozen Indians. He pointed to the body of Grey Wolf and then to Landless. A yell burst from the lips of the savages, and they rushed upon the latter. He met them, ran his sword through the heart of the first, of the second: Sir Charles moaned, stirred, and struggled to his knees. A third raised his knife; it would have descended, but Landless darted between the savage and the half-dazed, utterly helpless man at whom the blow was aimed, struck up the arm, and plunged his sword into the dark breast. A broken oar, snatched from the floor by the mulatto, descended upon his head, and with a woman's scream sounding in his ear, he fell heavily to the floor, and lay as one dead.
When he came to himself, it was to find the great room still crowded with men, and filled with noise and confusion, but the thronging figures and the excited voices were those of friends—of servants from the neighboring plantations, of small planters and tenants of Colonels Ludwell and Fitzhugh, the Surveyor-General, and Dr. Anthony Nash. He saw the master, panting, bleeding, but exultant, seize Dr. Nash's hands in his own. He saw Sir Charles smile and extend his box of richly scented snuff to Colonel Ludwell, and the women leaving their corner of refuge with hysterical laughter and tears; saw Betty Carrington in her father's arms, and Mistress Lettice being helped across a heap of dead by Captain Laramore. Indians, negroes, mulatto, scoundrel whites, were gone.