"The more fool you, for you'll be a long time dead. Stand back, Fleming."
As I ran forward I let out a shout.
Simultaneously a revolver cracked.
Bothwell cursed furiously, for Henry Fleming had struck up the arm of the murderer.
The Russian turned furiously on the engineer and fired point-blank at him.
The bullet must have struck him somewhere, for the man gave a cry.
Bothwell whirled upon me and fired twice as I raced across the moonlit sand.
A flash of lightning seared my shoulder but did not stop me.
"Ha! The meddler again! Stung you that time, my friend," he shouted, and fired at me a third time.
They were the last words he was ever to utter . One moment his dark, venomous face craned toward me above the smoke of his revolver, the next it was slowly sinking to the ground in a contorted spasm of pain and rage.