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 "Into the canoe," Lachlan panted. "I'll hold them. . . . Quick, man!" he shouted. But the hunter shook his head.

There was no time for talk. The Spaniard and the three cutlass men were at hand. Yet before they closed Almayne spoke a guttural word, and the two Indians dropy ed over the stern.

Out of the corner of his eye Lachlan saw that Almayne carried not the cutlass with which he had equipped himself, but one of the long paddles of the canoe. Next moment, as the Spaniard and one of Falcon's seamen rushed, the tall hunter smote with this weapon as though it were a flail.

Don Ruy Ortiz, catching the blow squarely on his shoulder, was hurled sideways and fell sprawling. He fell, as luck would have it, directly in front of the foremost of Falcon's seamen, and the latter, stumbling over him, reeled sideways, staggering drunkenly as he tried to regain his balance.

Almayne gripped Lachlan's arm, nearly dragging him off his feet.

"Now, lad," he shouted. "Overboard!"

Next moment he stood on the brig's bulwark, Lachlan beside him; and in another instant both plunged into the river.

Almayne sat hunched in the canoe's bow, as angry as the proverbial wet hen. In truth, no hen was ever wetter. He had plunged, it seemed to him, almost to the bottom of the river, and, being but an indifferent