Moran could not see--blind to friend or foe, as she was deaf to reason, she struck at him with all the strength of her arm. But there was no skill in her fighting now. Wilbur dropped his own knife and gripped her right wrist. She closed with him upon the instant, clutching at his throat with her one free hand; and as he felt her strength--doubled and tripled in the fury of her madness--Wilbur knew that, however easily he had overcome his enemy of a moment before, he was now fighting for his very life.

At first, Wilbur merely struggled to keep her from him--to prevent her using her dirk. He tried not to hurt her. But what with the spirits he had drunk before the attack, what with the excitement of the attack itself and the sudden unleashing of the brute in him an instant before, the whole affair grew dim and hazy in his mind. He ceased to see things in their proportion. His new-found strength gloried in matching itself with another strength that was its equal. He fought with Moran--not as he would fight with either woman or man, or with anything human, for the matter of that. He fought with her as against some impersonal force that it was inc.u.mbent upon him to conquer--that it was imperative he should conquer if he wished to live. When she struck, he struck blow for blow, force for force, his strength against hers, glorying in that strange contest, though he never once forgot that this last enemy was the girl he loved. It was not Moran whom he fought; it was her force, her determination, her will, her splendid independence, that he set himself to conquer.

Already she had dropped or flung away the dirk, and their battle had become an issue of sheer physical strength between them. It was a question now as to who should master the other. Twice she had fought Wilbur to his knees, the heel of her hand upon his face, his head thrust back between his shoulders, and twice he had wrenched away, rising to his feet again, panting, bleeding even, but with his teeth set and all his resolution at the sticking-point. Once he saw his chance, and planted his knuckles squarely between her eyes where her frown was knotted hard, hoping to stun her and end the fight once and for all. But the blow did not seem to affect her in the least. By this time he saw that her Berserker rage had worked itself clear as fermenting wine clears itself, and that she knew now with whom she was fighting; and he seemed now to understand the incomprehensible, and to sympathize with her joy in measuring her strength against his; and yet he knew that the combat was deadly serious, and that more than life was at stake. Moran despised a weakling.

For an instant, as they fell apart, she stood off, breathing hard and rolling up her sleeve; then, as she started forward again, Wilbur met her half-way, caught her round the neck and under the arm, gripping her left wrist with his right hand behind her; then, exerting every ounce of strength he yet retained, he thrust her down and from him, until at length, using his hip as a pivot, he swung her off her feet, threw her fairly on her back, and held her so, one knee upon her chest, his hands closed vise-like on her wrists.

Then suddenly Moran gave up, relaxing in his grasp all in a second, and, to his great surprise, suddenly smiled.

"Ho! mate," she exclaimed; "that was a tough one; but I'm beaten--you're stronger than I thought for."

Wilbur released her and rose to his feet.

"Here," she continued, "give me your hand. I'm as weak as a kitten." As Wilbur helped her to her feet, she put her hand to her forehead, where his knuckles had left their mark, and frowned at him, but not ill-naturedly.

"Next time you do that," she said, "use a rock or a belaying-pin, or something that won't hurt--not your fist, mate." She looked at him admiringly. "What a two-fisted, brawny dray-horse it is! I told you I was stronger than most men, didn't I? But I'm the weaker of us two, and that's a fact. You've beaten, mate--I admit it; you've conquered me, and," she continued, smiling again and shaking him by the shoulder--"and, mate, do you know, I love you for it."

XI. A CHANGE IN LEADERS

"Well," exclaimed Wilbur at length, the excitement of the fight returning upon him. "We have plenty to do yet. Come on, Moran."

It was no longer Moran who took the initiative--who was the leader. The brief fight upon the sh.o.r.e had changed all that. It was Wilbur who was now the master, it was Wilbur who was aggressive. He had known what it meant to kill. He was no longer afraid of anything, no longer hesitating. He had felt a sudden quadrupling of all his strength, moral and physical.

All that was strong and virile and brutal in him seemed to harden and stiffen in the moment after he had seen the beach-comber collapse limply on the sand under the last strong knife-blow; and a sense of triumph, of boundless self-confidence, leaped within him, so that he shouted aloud in a very excess of exhilaration; and s.n.a.t.c.hing up a heavy cutting-in spade, that had been dropped in the fight near the burning cabin, tossed it high into the air, catching it again as it descended, like any exultant savage.

"Come on!" he cried to Moran; "where are the beach-combers gone? I'm going to get one more before the show is over."

The two pa.s.sed out of the zone of smoke, and reached the other side of the burning cabin just in time to see the last of the struggle. The whole affair had not taken more than a quarter of an hour. In the end the beach-combers had been beaten. Four had fled into the waste of sand and sage that lay back of the sh.o.r.e, and had not been pursued. A fifth had been almost hamstrung by one of the "Bertha's" coolies, and had given himself up. A sixth, squealing and shrieking like a tiger-cat, had been made prisoner; and Wilbur himself had accounted for the seventh.

As Wilbur and Moran came around the cabin they saw the "Bertha Millner's" Chinamen in a group, not far from the water's edge, rea.s.sembled after the fight--panting and b.l.o.o.d.y, some of them bare to the belt, their weapons still in their hands. Here and there was a bandaged arm or head; but their number was complete--or no, was it complete?

"Ought to be one more," said Wilbur, anxiously hastening for-ward.

As the two came up the coolies parted, and Wilbur saw one of them, his head propped upon a rolled-up blouse, lying ominously still on the trampled sand.

"It's Charlie!" exclaimed Moran.

"Where's he hurt?" cried Wilbur to the group of coolies. "Jim!--where's Jim? Where's he hurt, Jim?"

Jim, the only member of the crew besides Charlie who could understand or speak English, answered:

"Kai-gingh him fin' pistol, you' pistol; Charlie him fight plenty; bime-by, when he no see, one-piecee Kai-gingh he come up behin', shoot um Charlie in side--savvy?"

"Did he kill him? Is he dead?"

"No, I tink.u.m die plenty soon; him no savvy nuttin' now, him all-same sleep. Plenty soon bime-by him sleep for good, I tink."

There was little blood to be seen when Wilbur gently unwrapped the torn sleeve of a blouse that had been used as a bandage. Just under the armpit was the mark of the bullet--a small puncture already closed, half hidden under a clot or two of blood. The coolie lay quite unconscious, his eyes wide open, drawing a faint, quick breath at irregular intervals.

"What do you think, mate?" asked Moran in a low voice.

"I think he's got it through the lungs," answered Wilbur, frowning in distress and perplexity. "Poor old Charlie!"

Moran went down on a knee, and put a finger on the slim, corded wrist, yellow as old ivory.

"Charlie," she called--"Charlie, here, don't you know me? Wake up, old chap! It's Moran. You're not hurt so very bad, are you?"

Charlie's eyes closed and opened a couple of times.

"No can tell," he answered feebly; "hurt plenty big"; then he began to cough.

Wilbur drew a sigh of relief. "He's all right!" he exclaimed.

"Yes, I think he's all right," a.s.sented Moran.

"First thing to do now is to get him aboard the schooner," said Wilbur.

"We'll take him right across in the beach-combers' dory here. By Jove!"

he exclaimed on a sudden. "The ambergris--I'd forgotten all about it."

His heart sank. In the hideous confusion of that morning's work, all thought of the loot had been forgotten. Had the battle been for nothing, after all? The moment the beach-combers had been made aware of the meditated attack, it would have been an easy matter for them to have hidden the ambergris--destroyed it even.

In two strides Wilbur had reached the beach-combers' dory and was groping in the forward cuddy. Then he uttered a great shout of satisfaction. The "stuff" was there, all of it, though the ma.s.s had been cut into quarters, three parts of it stowed in tea-flails, the fourth still reeved up in the hammock netting.

"We've got it!" he cried to Moran, who had followed him. "We've got it, Moran! Over $100,000. We're rich--rich as boodlers, you and I. Oh, it was worth fighting for, after all, wasn't it? Now we'll get out of here--now we'll cut for home."

"It's only Charlie I'm thinking about," answered Moran, hesitating. "If it wasn't for that we'd be all right. I don't know whether we did right, after all, in jumping the camp here. I wouldn't like to feel that I'd got Charlie into our quarrel only to have him killed."

Wilbur stared at this new Moran in no little amazement. Where was the reckless, untamed girl of the previous night, who had sworn at him and denounced his niggling misgivings as to right and wrong?

"Hoh!" he retorted impatiently, "Charlie's right enough. And, besides, I didn't force him to anything. I--we, that is--took the same chances. If I hadn't done for my man there behind the cabin, he would have done for me. At all events, we carried our point. We got the loot. They took it from us, and we were strong enough to get it back."

Moran merely nodded, as though satisfied with his decision, and added:

"Well, what next, mate?"

"We'll get back to the 'Bertha' now and put to sea as soon as we can catch the tide. I'll send Jim and two of the other men across in the dory with Charlie. The rest of us will go around by the sh.o.r.e. We've got to have a chin-chin with Hoang, if he don't get loose aboard there and fire the boat before we can get back. I don't propose taking these beach-combers back to 'Frisco with us."

"What will we do with the two prisoners?" she asked.

"Let them go; we've got their arms."

The positions of the two were reversed. It was Wilbur who a.s.sumed control and direction of what went forward, Moran taking his advice and relying upon his judgment.

In accordance with Wilbur's orders, Charlie was carried aboard the dory; which, with two Chinamen at the oars, and the ambergris stowed again into the cuddy, at once set off for the schooner. Wilbur himself cut the ropes on the two prisoners, and bade them shift for themselves. The rest of the party returned to the "Bertha Millner" around the wide sweep of the beach.