Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/399

Rh the soft fern, their eight round steel muzzles pointed into the green hollow. It was very still and lonely save for the life of the rosily-leaping fire.

In the far corner, against a trunk a rifle rested, by its side a form crouched—near a pile of strewn boughs. Following the lines of the figure to the extended arm, they saw that it was caught by something heavy and black—the cover of the iron chest.

The eight muzzles circled, covering the figure.

A sharp demand for surrender rang through the glen. But the sentry was quite as silent as that other one, in the dawn by the drift-wood log.

Down into the saucer the eight clambered, with rifles on the alert for fear of treachery.

Benson's heavy boot kicked the thigh of the prone figure.

"Dead, stone dead," he said.

Swollen was the face, the mouth twisted in its last grimace of horror and agony. The fatuous, light-blue eyes held more of expression now than ever they had in life, and the stiff tow pompadour seemed to bristle still, though the evil heart had passed beyond any capacity for fear.

They glanced at the chest. The heavy cover had pinioned the arm. It was swollen to twice its size.

"But that couldn't have killed him," said Ben.

"No, there's the assassin's mark."

The captain pointed to two tiny sharp holes in the blue-black corruption of the arm.

From under the lid, they heard a dull clink of some dis-