"What are you loitering there for ?" There was no answer; but the lad Andrews stepped forward and shot him in the stomach.

The hundred waiting miners stood as motionless and helpless as if they were paralyzed.

The manager clapped his two hands to the wound and doubled himself up.

Then he staggered away; but another of the assassins fired, and he went down sidewise, kicking and clawing among a heap of clinkers.

Menzies, the Scotchman, gave a roar of rage at the sight and rushed with an iron spanner at the murderers; but was met by two balls in the face which dropped him dead at their very feet.
There was a surge forward of some of the miners, and an inarticulate cry of pity and of anger; but a couple of the strangers emptied their six-shooters over the heads of the crowd, and they broke and scattered, some of them rushing wildly back to their homes in Vermissa.
When a few of the bravest had rallied, and there was a return to the mine, the murderous gang had vanished in the mists of morning, without a single witness being able to swear to the identity of these men who in front of a hundred spectators had wrought this double crime.
Scanlan and McMurdo made their way back; Scanlan somewhat subdued, for it was the first murder job that he had seen with his own eyes, and it appeared less funny than he had been led to believe.