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“Cloths?” repeated Tony, but before Hendron answered, he realized the reason.
“For arm-bands, Tony; so, in the dark, we will know our own.”
“Yes, sir.”
“No time to lose, Tony.”
“No, sir. But—Eve is safe?”
“She is not hurt, I hear. You might see her for an instant. The women are tearing up bandages.”
Tony found her, but not alone; she was in a room with twenty others, tearing white cloth into strips. At least, he saw for himself that she was not yet hurt; at least he had one word with her.
“Tony! Take care of yourself!”
“How about you, Eve?”
She disregarded this; said only:
“Get back to the ship, Tony, after the fight. Oh, get back to the ship!” He went out again. A bullet pinged on the wall beside him; bullets were flying again. Behind Tony, on the other edge of the camp, sporadic firing flashed along the road and in the woods. The bursts of machine-gun fire sounded uglier; there were groans again, and screams. Tony could sense rather than see the gathering of attackers on this edge; then firing broke out on the other side too.
He wondered how many of his runners with the arm-bands and
with the orders would fall before they reached the first line of the defense. With his own burden of machine-gun cartridges, he returned to the post he had fought.
“That you, Tony?” Jack Taylor hailed. “Cartridges? Great! We’ll scrap those bimboes. Hell! Just in time, I’d say.… Here they come!”
“Listen!” yelled Tony, giving his orders with realization that, if he did not speak now, he might never: “If they get in, delay them but don’t mix with them; each man tie a white cloth on his sleeve—and retreat to the ship!” And he issued the strips he had brought with him.
From the buildings, reënforcements arrived—six men with guns slung over their shoulders, and bayonets that caught a glint from the firing. They were burdened with more cartridge-cases, and they carried another machine-gun. Tony placed them almost without comment.
One of the new men produced a Very pistol. His private property, he explained, which he had brought along “for emergencies.”
“It’s one now,” Tony said simply, and took the pistol from him. He fired it; and the Very light, hanging in the air, revealed men at the wire everywhere. A thousand men—two thousand; no sense even in estimating them.
In the green glare which showed them, Jack Taylor looked at Tony. “My God, I forgot,” he said, and shoved Tony his canteen.
Tony tasted the whisky and passed it on, then again he claimed the machine-gun. He made a flat fan of the flashes before him as he swung the gun back and forth. He was killing men by scores, he knew; but he knew, also, that if the hundreds had the nerve to stick, they were “in.”
CHAPTER 19—ESCAPE
THEY were in! And Tony did not need the green flare of the last light from the Very pistol to tell him so.
“Fall back! Fall back to the ship—fighting!” Tony yelled again and again.
He did not need to tell his men to fight. They were doing that. The trouble was, they still wanted to fight, holding on here.
What saved them was the fact that the machine-gun ammunition was gone. The machine-guns were useless; nothing to do but abandon them.
“Fall back!” Tony yelled. “Oh, fall back!”
A few obeyed him. The rest could not, he suddenly realized; and he had to leave them, dying. Jack Taylor was beside him, firing a rifle. They were five altogether who were falling back; firing, from the machine-gun post.
Figures from the black leaped at them, and it was hand to hand. Tony fought with a bayonet, then with a clubbed rifle, madly and wildly swinging. He was struck, and reeled. Some one caught him, and he clutched the other’s throat to strangle him before his eyes got the patch of gray which was a white arm-band.
“Come on!” cried Jack Taylor’s voice; and with Taylor, he ran in the dark. Clear of the attack for an instant, they rallied—the two of them—found a pistol on a body over which they stumbled, emptied it at the attackers, and fell back again.
They reached the buildings. Gunfire was flashing from the laboratories which otherwise were black. The dormitories sprang into light; windows shone, and spread illumination which showed that they were deserted and were being used, now, by the defenders of the camp to light the space already abandoned. The final concentration was in the center, dominated by the looming black bulk of the Space Ship standing in its stocks.
