Now Ruth and Dick were a scant fifty yards from the
crevice. I saw him stop, push her from him toward it. She
shook her head.

Now Chiu-Ming was with them. Ruth sprang to the
pony, lifted from its back a rifle. Then into the mass of
their pursuers Drake and she poured a fusillade. They
huddled, wavered, broke for cover.

"A chance!" gasped Ventnor.

Behind us was a wolflike yelping. The first pack had
re-formed; had crossed the barricade the dynamite had
made; was rushing upon us.

I ran as I had never known I could. Over us whined the
bullets from the covering guns. Close were we now to
the mouth of the fissure. If we could but reach it. Close,
close were our pursuers, too--the arrows closer.

"No use!" said Ventnor. "We can't make it. Meet 'em
from the front. Drop--and shoot."

We threw ourselves down, facing them. There came a
triumphant shouting. And in that strange sharpening of
the senses that always goes hand in hand with deadly peril,
that is indeed nature's summoning of every reserve to
meet that peril, my eyes took them in with photographic
nicety--the linked mail, lacquered blue and scarlet, of the
horsemen; brown, padded armor of the footmen; their