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112 As for his scheme, Alan Law had none other than to give battle, and sacrifice himself, if need be. His eye lighted on a four-foot length of stout three-inch oak scantling—an excellently formidable club.

Snatching this up, he pelted down the wharf, arriving at the end barely in time to oppose the first man who landed from the schooner. This one the club took on the side of the head; he fell without a murmur. The one who followed took a cracked crown back to the schooner's deck. The third brought a capstan-bar and proved more difficult to deal with. Others were swarming to his aid when a swing of the bar knocked Alan's club from his grasp. But his opponent was luckless; before he could recover from the sweep of his blow, Alan had landed on his chin a fist that had all his heart and soul behind it. A flourishing pair of heels and a ringing thump on the schooner's deck finished that episode.

But now, disarmed, Alan's case was desperate. He was being surrounded.

Wildly casting about for some weapon, he leaped toward a pyramid of little but heavy kegs, and seizing one, swung it overhead and cast it full force into the midriff of his nearest enemy; so that this one doubled up convulsively, with a sickish grunt, and vanished in turn over the end of the