However," he went on cheerfully, "we shall before long"-- He broke off with a start.

"Rudie! By Jove, I forgot! Did you find them?
Where's Bertha Forrester ?" "Gone," said Rudolph, and struggling to explain, found his late adventure shrunk into the compass of a few words, far too small and bare to suggest the magnitude of his decision.

"They went," he began, "in a boat--" He was saved the trouble; for suddenly Captain Kneebone cried in a voice of keen satisfaction, "Here they come! I told ye!"-- and fired his rifle.
Through a patch of firelight, down the gentle slope of the field, swept a ragged cohort of men, some bare-headed, some in their scarlet nightcaps, as though they had escaped from bed, and all yelling.

One of the foremost, who met the captain's bullet, was carried stumbling his own length before he sank underfoot; as the Mausers flashed from between the sand-bags, another and another man fell to his knees or toppled sidelong, tripping his fellows into a little knot or windrow of kicking arms and legs; but the main wave poured on, all the faster.

Among and above them, like wreckage in that surf, tossed the shapes of scaling-ladders and notched bamboos.