Chapter 15

SHOWING HOW BRAZIL CHOSE HER PRESIDENT

Two thousand five hundred years ago the prophet Jeremiah expressed incredulity as to the power of an Ethiopian to change his skin or a leopard his spots. The march of the centuries has fully justified the seer's historic doubt, so it makes but slight demand on the critical faculties to assume that two years' residence in Europe had not cooled the hot southern blood flowing in Carmela's veins.

She had hated Iris before she set eyes on her; she hated her now that she had seen her rare beauty; she gloated on the suffering inflicted by the presence of the faded old man who claimed her as his bride. Though it was of the utmost importance that she should hasten to her father, she returned to Las Flores in her rival's company, their arms linked in seeming friendship, and the Brazilian girl's ears alert to treasure every word that told of Bulmer's wooing.

Therein she greatly miscalculated the true gentility of one whom his cronies described as "a rough diamond." Bulmer realized that Iris was overwrought. Vague but sensational items in newspapers had prepared him in some measure for the story of her wanderings since last they met in quiet, old-fashioned Bootle. He felt that she was altered, that their ways in life had deviated with a sharpness that was not to be brought back into parallel grooves simply because he had traveled many thousands of miles to find her.

So Dickey contented himself by listening to Coke's Homeric account of the _Andromeda's_ wrecking, and if he interposed an occasional question, and thus drew the girl's sweet voice into the talk, it was invariably germane to the strange history of the ship and her human freight.

Coke's narrative was picturesque and lurid. At times, he called himself to order; at times, both Iris and Carmela affected not to have heard him. But Carmela's interest never flagged. Nor did Bulmer's. As the yarn progressed--for Watts and Schmidt and Norrie had joined them, and the whole party was seated in an inner room where an impromptu meal was provided--both the woman of Brazil and the man of Lancashire seized on the same unspoken _motif_. Every incident centered in the striking personality of Philip Hozier. From the instant the second shell struck the winch, and laid him apparently dead on the forecastle, to the very hour of this coming together at Las Flores, Hozier held the stage. It was he who took Iris on his shoulders and brought her to safety through the spume of the wrathful sea, he who carried her to the hut, he who crossed Fernando Noronha alone to protect her.

Coke was impartial. He would have minimized his own singular bravery in running up the ship's signals had not Iris given him a breathing-space while she enthralled the others with her description. Otherwise, Coke skipped no line of his epic.

"You'll rec'lect," he wheezed, in a voice that rasped like a file, "you'll rec'lect, Mr. Verity, as I said to you that Hozier was good enough to take charge of the bridge of a battleship. By--well, any 'ow, if I'd said the Channel Fleet I shouldn't 'ave bin talkin' through me 'at. Look at 'im now. 'E's the on'y reel live man Dom Wot's-'is-name 'as got. Sink me! if it wasn't for the folks at 'ome, an' the fac' that the _Andromeeda's_ skipper ought to keep clear of politics in this crimson country, I'd 'ave a cut in at the game meself."

It might be hoped that Carmela's mood would soften when she discovered her rival's hapless love, but that would be expecting something which her bursting southern heart could not give. A volcano pours forth lava, not water. It scorches, not heals. Iris, willing or not, had sapped her Salvador's allegiance. Carmela wanted to see those curved lips writhing in pain, those brown eyes dimmed, that smooth brow wrung with the grief that knows no remedy.

A fierce joy leaped up in her when Verity spoke of an early departure.

"You see, Iris," he explained, "these Brazilian bucks may be months in settlin' their differences. Dickey an' me, 'elped a lot by our Consul, squeezed a pass out of the President--beg pardon, miss, but 'e is President, in Pernambuco, at all events," he said in an apologetic "aside" to Carmela--"an' the sooner we make tracks for ole England the better it'll be for all of us. Wot do you say to an early start to-morrow? We'd be off to-night, on'y I'm feared my rheumaticky bones wouldn't stand the racket."

The color ebbed from Iris's face, but she said at once:

"I shall be ready, uncle dear. I promised Dom Corria to look after the hospital appliances that are so much needed by the poor soldiers, but the Senhora De Sylva will attend to that much more effectually than I."

"Good! Then that's settled."

David pursed out his thick lips with a sigh of relief. Though he had watched the spoken record of the _Andromeda_ and her company for craftier hints than was suspected by his fellow travelers, he was not deaf to Coke's appreciation of Hozier. The silence of his niece on that same topic was alarming, but the position could not be so bad if she was willing to leave for the coast without seeing him again. No secret was made of Philip's errand into the interior. The homeward-bound cavalcade would be at Pesqueira ere he returned to the _finca_.

Carmela, of course, did not believe in a woman's complacency in such a vital matter. She was ever prepared to spring, to strike, to wrench their plans to suit her own ends; but, contrive as she might, she could not succeed in leaving Iris alone with Bulmer. Full of device, she was foiled at each turn. The day wore, the sun went down, the starlit sky made beautiful a parched earth, but never a word in privacy did Iris exchange with her husband-to-be. Carmela's malice was not hidden from her, but she despised it. There was some ease for her tortured brain in defeating it. If the Senhora De Sylva had only understood how thoroughly the Englishwoman loathed her petty jealousy, it was possible that the few remaining hours of their enforced intimacy might have been rendered less irksome.

But, by this time, fate had gathered the slackened strings of their destinies. Thenceforth they became her puppets. Permitted for a little while to play the tragi-comedy of life according to their own inclinations, now the stern edict had gone forth that they were to act their allotted parts in one of those fascinating if blood-stained dramas that the history of nations so often puts on the stage. The future is the most cunning of playwrights. No man may tell what the next scene shall be. And no man, nor any woman, could guess the mad revel of hate and war that would rage that night around the placid homestead of Las Flores.

Behind the veranda was a huge ballroom, converted, by the exigencies of the campaign, into a dining hall for the many inmates of the _finca_. The Brazilian ladies, the sailors, some sick or wounded officers who were not confined to bed, even the household servants, took their meals there in common. Supper was served soon after nine o'clock. When cigars and cigarettes were lighted, and the company broke up into laughing, gossiping, noisy groups, the place looked more like a popular Continental cafe than a room in a private mansion.

Though De Sylva, General Russo, San Benavides, and some score of members of the President's staff who usually dined at the _finca_, were now absent, there was no lack of lively chatter. A very Babel of tongues mixed in amity. The prevalent note was one of cheery animation. Carmela exerted herself to win popularity, and a President's daughter need not put forth very strenuous efforts in that direction to be acclaimed by most.

Iris was listening, with real interest, to Verity's description of the finding of Macfarlane in the _Andromeda's_ boat by a Cardiff-bound collier three days after he had drifted away from Fernando Noronha.

"The yarn kem to us through the Consul at Pernambuco," he said. "Evidently, from wot you tell me, it's all right. Poor ole Mac 'ad a bad time afore 'e was picked up, but 'e was alive, an' I'm jolly glad of it, for 'e'll be a first-rate witness w'en this business comes up in court."

"Wot court?" demanded Coke sharply.

"The court that settles our claim, of course," retorted Verity, with a quick ferret look at his fellow-conspirator.

"There'll be no claim. The President means to stump up in style. You take my tip, an' shut up about courts," said Coke.

"It'll cost Brazil a tidy penny," remarked Bulmer thoughtfully. "Nobody would ever imagine wot bags of gold an' parcels of di'monds sailors an' firemen carry around in their kit-bags till a ship is lost an' a Gover'ment 'as to pay."

Watts deemed this an exquisite joke. He laughed loudly.

"That reminds me," he cried. "W'en the _Gem of the Sea_ turned turtle on the James an' Mary----"

A _criado_, a nondescript man-servant attached to the household, stooped over Iris and whispered something. She gathered that she was wanted in the _patèo_, or court-yard, which, owing to the construction of the house, stood on one side instead of in front, where the lawn usurped its usual position.

"Who is it?" she asked.

The voice sank even lower.

"Colonel San Benavides, Senhora."

She had gathered sufficient of Brazilian ways to understand that the man had been bribed to convey this request to her without attracting attention.

"Tell him to wait," she said, hoping to gain a moment wherein to decide how best to act.

"It is urgent, Senhora--_ao mesmo tempo_, the colonel said."

"Go! That is my answer."

The man's unwillingness to obey showed how imperative were his instructions. She rose, and the _criado_ hurried out, satisfied that she would follow. But Iris had no wish to meet San Benavides. If she were seen with him in the dark _patèo_ at this late hour, fuel would be added to the fire of Carmela's foolish spite. She was aware of Carmela's covert glance watching her from the other end of the long room. What was to be done? Why not send Carmela in her stead? They were almost of the same height, and dressed somewhat alike in flowered muslin. It would be an amusing mistake, though annoying, perhaps, to San Benavides; at any rate, Carmela would not object, and Iris was fully resolved not to keep the tryst in person.

She walked straight to her enemy.

"Colonel San Benavides awaits you in the _patèo_," she said in English.

"Awaits _me_!"

There was no mistaking the gleam in those jet-black eyes. The smoldering fire flamed into furnace heat at the implied indignity of such a mandate being delivered by Iris.

"I suppose so," said Iris carelessly. "A servant brought the message. He came to me in the first instance, but I am just going to my room to pack my few belongings. We leave here at daybreak, you know."

Carmela tried to smile.

"I shall be sorry to lose you," she said, "though I admit it will be pleasant to occupy my own room again."

Then Iris was genuinely distressed.

"I had not the least notion----" she began, but Carmela nodded and made off, saying as she went:

"What matter--for one night?"

So, at last, she would learn the truth. Salvador was out there, alone. She would soon judge him. If he were innocent, she would know. If he had merely been made the sport of a designing woman, she was ready to forgive. In a more amiable mood than she had displayed at any moment since her arrival at Las FIores, Carmela hastened along a dark corridor, crossed a bare hall, passed through a porch, and searched the shadows of the patèo for the form of her one-time lover.

A voice whispered, in French:

"Come quickly, Senhora, I pray you!"

It startled her to find San Benavides talking French, until it occurred to her that Iris and he must converse in that language or hardly at all. The thought was disquieting. The volcano stirred again.

"Senhora, je vous prie!" again pleaded the man, who was on horseback under the trees.

She did not hesitate, but ran to him. Without a word of explanation, he bent sideways, caught her in his arms, drew her up until she was seated on the holsters strapped to a gaucho saddle, and wheeled his horse into a gallop. Filled with a grim determination, she uttered no protest. Not a syllable crossed her lips lest he should strive to amend his woeful blunder. She noticed that they were not going toward the camp, but circling round the enclosed land in the direction of the hills. Though the night was dark, the stars gave light enough for the horse to move freely. Carmela's head was bent. A gauze-like mantilla covered her black hair, and, strange though it may seem, one woman's small waist and slim figure can be amazingly like the same physical attributes in another woman.

But San Benavides wondered why the cold Ingleza had surrendered so silently. He expected at least a scream, a struggle, an impassioned demand to be released. He was prepared for anything save a dumb acceptance of this extraordinary raid.

So he began to explain.

"One word, Senhora!" he muttered. "You must think me mad. I am not. All is lost! Our army is defeated! In an hour Las Flores will be in flames!"

The girl quivered in his arms. A moaning cry came from her.

"It is true, I swear it!" he vowed. "I mean you no ill. I fought till the end, and my good horse alone carried me in advance of the routed troops. Dom Corria may reach the _finca_ alive, but, even so, he and the rest will be killed. I refused to escape without you. Believe me or not, you are dearer than life itself. In the confusion we two may not be missed. Trust yourself wholly to me, I beseech you!"

He spoke jerkily, in the labored phrase of a man who has to pick and choose the readiest words in an unfamiliar language.

Carmela, with a sudden movement, raised her face to his, and threw aside her veil.

"Salvador!" she said.

His eyes glared into hers. His frenzied clutch at the reins pulled the horse on to its haunches.

"My God! . . . Carmela!" he almost shrieked.

"Yes. So you are running away, Salvador--running away with the English miss--deserting my father in the hour of his need! But she will die with the others, you say. Well, then--join her!"

During that quick twist on the horse's withers, she had plucked a revolver from a holster. She meant to shatter that false face of his utterly, to blast him as with lightning . . . but the lock snapped harmlessly, for San Benavides had, indeed, borne himself gallantly in the fray. He struck at her now in a whirl of fury. She winced, but with catamount activity drew back her arm and hit him on the temple with the heavy weapon. He collapsed limply, reeled from off the saddle, and they fell together. The frightened horse, finding himself at liberty, galloped to the camp, where already there was an unusual commotion.

Carmela flung herself on the man's body. She was capable of extremes either of grief or passion.

"Salvador, my love! my love!" she screamed. "What have I done? Speak to me, Salvador! It is I, Carmela! Oh, Mary Mother, come to my aid! I have killed him, killed my Salvador!"

He looked very white and peaceful as he lay there in the gloom. She could not see whether his lips moved. She was too distraught to note if his heart was beating. It seemed incredible that she, a weak woman, should have crushed the life out of that lithe and active frame with one blow. Then a dark stain appeared on the white skin. Her hands, her lips, were covered with blood. She tasted it. The whole earth reeked of it. It scorched her as with vitriol. She rose and ran blindly. The darkness appalled her. No matter now what fate befell, she must have light, the sound of human voices. . . . And she sobbed piteously as she ran:

"Salvador! Oh, God in heaven, my Salvador!"

It is not the crime, but the conscience, that scourges erring humanity. Carmela needed some such flogging. It was just as well that her fright at the horrible touch of blood was not balanced by the saner knowledge that a ruptured vein was nature's own remedy for a man jarred into insensibility. Long before Carmela reached the _finca_, San Benavides stirred, groaned, squirmed convulsively, and raised himself on hands and knees. He turned, and sat down, feeling his head.

"The spit-fire!" he muttered. "The she-devil! And that other! Would that I could wring _her_ neck!"

A sputtering of rifles crackled in the valley. There was a blurred clamor of voices. He looked at the sky, at the black summits of the hills. He stood up, and his inseparable sword clanked on the stony ground.

"Ah, well," he growled, "I have done with women. They have had the best of my life. What is left I give to Brazil."

So he, too, made for Las Flores, but slowly, for he was quite exhausted, and his limbs were stiff with the rigors of a wild day in the saddle.

Carmela went back to a household that paid scant heed to her screaming. Dom Corria was there, bare-headed, his gorgeous uniform sword-slashed and blood-bespattered. General Russo, too, was beating his capacious chest and shouting:

"God's bones, let us make a fight of it!"

A sprinkling of soldiers, all dismounted cavalry or gunners, a few disheveled officers, had accompanied De Sylva in his flight. With reckless bravery, he and Russo had tried to rally the troops camped at headquarters. It was a hopeless effort. Half-breeds can never produce a military caste. They may fight valiantly in the line of battle--they will not face the unknown, the terrible, the harpies that come at night, borne on the hurricane wings of panic. Unhappily, De Sylva and his bodyguard were the messengers of their own disaster. The cowardly genius at Pesqueira had planned a surprise. He would not lead it, of course, but in Dom Miguel Barraca he found an eager substitute. It was a coup of the Napoleonic order; an infantry attack along the entire front of the Liberationist position cloaked the launching against the center of a formidable body of cavalry. The project was to thrust this lance into the rebel position, probe it thoroughly, as a surgeon explores a gunshot wound, and extract the offender in the guise of Dom Corria.

The scheme had proved eminently successful. The Liberationists were crumpled up, and here was Dom Corria making his last stand.

He deserved better luck, for he was magnificent in failure. Calm as ever, he tried to be shot or captured when the reserves in camp failed him. Russo and the rest dragged him onward by main force.

"They want me only," he urged. "My death will end a useless struggle. I shall die a little later, when many more of my friends are killed. Why not die now?"

They would not listen.

"It is night!" they cried. "The enemy's horses are spent. A determined stand may give us another chance."

But it was a forlorn hope. As San Benavides lurched into the _patèo_, the horses of the first pursuing detachment strained up the slope between house and encampment.

Carmela, all her fire gone, the pallid ghost of the vengeful woman who would have shattered her lover's skull were the revolver loaded, was the first to see him. She actually crouched in terror. Her tongue was parched. If she uttered some low cry, none heard her.

Dom Corria, striving to dispose his meager garrison as best he could, met his trusted lieutenant. His face lit with joy.

"Ah, my poor Salvador!" he cried. "I thought we had lost you at the ford!"

"No," said San Benavides. "I ran away!"

Even in his dire extremity, De Sylva smiled.

"Would that others had run like you, my Salvador!" he said. "Then we should have been in Pernambuco to-morrow."

The Brazilian looked around. His eye dwelt heedlessly on the cowering Carmela. He was searching for Iris, who had been compelled by Coke and Bulmer and her uncle to take shelter behind the score of sailors who still remained at Las Flores.

"It is true, nevertheless," he said laconically. "I knew the game was lost, so I came here to try and save a lady."

"Ah--our Carmela? You thought of her?"

"No!"

Then the spell passed from Carmela. She literally threw herself on her lover.

"Yes, it is true!" she shrieked. "He came to save me, but I preferred to die here--with you, father--and with him."

Dom Corria did not understand these fire-works, but he had no time for thought. Bullets were crashing through the closed Venetians. Light they must have, or the defense would become an orgy of self-destruction, yet light was their most dangerous foe when men were shooting from the somber depths of the trees.

The assailants were steadily closing around the house. Their rifles covered every door and window. Each minute brought up fresh bands in tens and twenties. At last, Barraca himself arrived. Some members of his staff made a hasty survey of the situation. There were some three hundred men available, and, in all probability, Dom Corria could not muster one-sixth of that number. It was a crisis that called for vigor. The cavalry lance was twenty miles from its base, and there was no knowing what accident might reunite the scattered Liberationists. One column, at least, of the Nationalists had failed to keep its rendezvous, or this last desperate stand at Las Flores would have proved a sheer impossibility.

So the house must be rushed, no matter what the cost. This was a war of leaders. Let Dom Corria fall, and his most enthusiastic supporters would pay Dom Miguel's taxes without further parley. A scheme of concerted action was hastily arranged. Simultaneously, five detachments swarmed against the chosen points of assault. One crossed the _patèo_ to the porch, another made for the stable entrance, a third attacked the garden door, a fourth assailed the servants' quarters, and the fifth, strongest of all, and inspired by Dom Miguel's presence, battered in the shutters and tore away the piled up furniture of the ballroom.

The Nationalist leader's final order was terse.

"Spare the women; shoot every rebel; do not touch the foreigners unless they resist!"

With yells of "Abajo De Sylva!" "Morto por revoltados!" the assailants closed in. Neither side owned magazine rifles, so the fight was with machetes, swords, and bayonets when the first furious hail of lead had spent itself. No man thought of quarter, nor ceased to stab and thrust until he fell. Not even then did some of the half-savage combatants desist, and a many a thigh was gashed and boot-protected leg cut to the bone by those murderous hatchet knives wielded by hands which would soon stiffen in death.

When three hundred desperadoes meet fifty of like caliber in a hand-to-hand conflict--when the three hundred mean to end the business, and the fifty know that they must die--fighting for choice, but die in any event--the resultant encounter will surely be both fierce and brief. And never was fratricidal strife more sanguinary than during the earliest onset within the walls. Each inch of corridor, each plank of the ballroom floor, was contested with insane ferocity. This was not warfare. It savored of the carnage of the jungle. Its sounds were those of wild beasts. It smelled of the shambles.

By one of those queer chances which sometimes decide the hazard between life and death, the window nearest that end of the room where the sailors strove to protect a few shrieking women had not been broken in. Here, then, was a tiny bay of refuge; from it the men of the _Andromeda_ and the _Unser Fritz_, Bulmer, Verity, Iris, and such of the Brazilian ladies as had not fled to the upper rooms at the initial volley, looked out on an amazing butchery. De Sylva, no longer young, and never a robust man, had been dragged from mortal peril many times by his devoted adherents. Carmela had snatched a machete from the fingers of a dying soldier, and was fighting like one possessed of a fiend.

Once, when a combined rush drove the defenders nearly on top of the non-combatants, Iris would have striven to draw the half-demented girl into the little haven with the other women.

But Coke thrust her back, shouting:

"Leave 'er alone. She'll set about you if you touch her!"

Dickey Bulmer, too, who was displaying a fortitude hardly to be expected in a man of his years and habits, thought that interference was useless.

"Let 'er do what she can," he said. "She doesn't know wot is 'appenin' now. If she was on'y watchin' she'd be a ravin' lunatic. God 'elp us all, we've got ourselves into a nice mess!"

Somehow, the old man's Lancashire drawl, with its broad vowels and misplaced aspirates, exercised a singularly soothing effect on Iris's tensely-strung nerves. It seemed to remove her from that murder-filled arena. It was redolent of home, of quiet streets, of orderly crowds thronging to the New Brighton sands, of the sober, industrious, God-fearing folk who filled the churches and chapels at each service on a Sunday. These men and women of Brazil were her brothers and sisters in the great comity of nations, yet Heaven knows they did not figure in such guise during that hour of intense emotions.

But if Dickey Bulmer's simple words exalted him into the kingdom of the heroic, David Verity occupied a lower plane. Prayers and curses alternated on his lips. He was stupefied with fear. He had never seen the lust of slaying in men's eyes, and it mesmerized him. Many of the sailors wanted to join in on behalf of their friends. It needed all Coke's vehemence to restrain them. "Keep out of it, you swabs," he would growl. "It's your on'y chanst. This isn't our shindy. Let 'em rip an' be hanged to 'em!" Yet he was manifestly uneasy, and he kept a wary eye on De Sylva, whom he appraised at a personal value of five thousand pounds "an pickin's."

A tall, distinguished-looking man, wearing a brilliant uniform, his breast decorated with many orders, now appeared on the scene. He shouted something, and the attacking force redoubled their efforts. He raised a revolver, and took deliberate aim at Dom Corria. Coke saw him, and his bulldog pluck combined with avarice to overcome his common sense. Without thought of the consequences, he sprang into the swaying mob and pulled De Sylva aside. A bullet smashed into the wall behind them.

"Look out, mister!" he bellowed. "'Ere's a blighter 'oo wants to finish you quick!"

De Sylva's glance sought his adversary. He produced a revolver which hitherto had remained hidden in a pocket. Perhaps its bullets were not meant for an enemy. He fired at the tall man. A violent swerve of the two irregular ranks of soldiers screened each from the other. An opening offered, and the man who had singled out Dom Corria for his special vengeance fired again. The bullet struck Coke in the breast. The valiant little skipper staggered, and sank to the floor. His fiery eyes gazed up into Verity's.

"Damme if I ain't hulled!" he roared, his voice loud and harsh as if he were giving some command from the bridge in a gale of wind.

David dropped to his knees.

"For Gawd's sake, Jimmie!" he moaned.

"Yes, I've got it. Sarve me dam well right, too! No business to go ag'in me own pore old ship. Look 'ere, Verity, I'm done for! If you get away from this rotten muss, see to my missus an' the girls. If you don't--d--n you----"

"Fire!" shouted a strong English voice from without. A withering volley crashed through the open windows. Full twenty of the assailants fell, Dom Miguel de Barraca among them. There was an instant of terrible silence, as between the shocks of an earthquake.

"Now, come on!" shouted the same voice, and Philip Hozier rushed into the ballroom, followed by his scouts and a horde of Brazilian regulars. No one not actually an eye-witness of that thrilling spectacle would believe that a fight waged with such determined malevolence could stop so suddenly as did that fray in Las Flores. It was true, now as ever, that men of a mixed race cannot withstand the unforeseen. Dom Miguel fallen, and his cohort decimated by the leaden storm that tore in at them from an unexpected quarter, the rest fled without another blow. They raced madly for their horses, to find that every tethered group was in the hands of this new contingent. Then the darkness swallowed them. Dom Miguel's cavalry was disbanded.

At once the medley within died down. Men had no words as yet to meet this astounding development. Dom Corria went to where his rival lay. Dom Miguel was dying. His eyes met De Sylva's in a strange look of recognition. He tried to speak, but choked and died.

Then the living President stooped over the dead one. He murmured something. Those near thought afterward that he said:

"Is it worth it? Who knows!"

But he was surely President now; seldom have power and place been more hardly won.

His quiet glance sought Philip.

"Thank you, Mr. Hozier," he said. "All Brazil is your debtor. As for me, I can never repay you. I owe you my life, the lives of my daughter and of many of my friends, and the success of my cause."

Philip heard him as in a dream. He was looking at Iris. Her eyes were shining, her lips parted, yet she did not come to him. By her side was standing a white-haired old man, an Englishman, a stranger. Bending over Coke, and wringing his hands in incoherent sorrow, was another elderly Briton. A fear that Philip had never before known gripped his heartstrings now. He was pale and stern, and his forehead was seamed with foreboding.

"Who is that with Miss Yorke?" he said to Dom Corria.

The President had a rare knack of answering a straight question in a straight way.

"A Mr. Bulmer, I am told," he said.

There was a pause. General Russo, carved from head to foot, but so stout withal that his enemies' weapons had reached no vital part, approached. He thumped his huge stomach.

"We must rally our men," he said. "If we collect even five thousand to-night----"

"Yes," said De Sylva, "I will come. Before I go, Mr. Hozier, let me repeat that I and Brazil are grateful."

"May the devil take both you and Brazil!" was Philip's most ungracious reply, and he turned and strode out into the night.