Once the child wailed in pain and disconcerted him. The mother
bent over it, but it slept again. The silence was interminable,
profound. Then, of a sudden, the robins burst into full-throated song.
The night had passed.
A flood of dark figures boiled across the open. Arrows whistled and bow-
thongs sang. The shrill-tongued rifles answered back. A spear, and a
mighty cast, transfixed the Teslin woman as she hovered above the child.
A spent arrow, diving between the logs, lodged in the missionary's arm.
There was no stopping the rush. The middle distance was cumbered with
bodies, but the rest surged on, breaking against and over the barricade
like an ocean wave. Sturges Owen fled to the tent, while the men were
swept from their feet, buried beneath the human tide. Hay Stockard alone
regained the surface, flinging the tribesmen aside like yelping curs. He
had managed to seize an axe. A dark hand grasped the child by a naked
foot, and drew it from beneath its mother. At arm's length its puny body
circled through the air, dashing to death against the logs. Stockard
clove the man to the chin and fell to clearing space.
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