De Boer dashed for the window. I was still struggling. A hand cuffed me in the face. A projector rammed into my side. "Stop it, fool American!" De Boer came back with a chastened bandit ahead of him. The man was muttering and rubbing his shoulder, and De Boer said: "Try anything like that again, Cartner, and I won't be so easy on you." De Boer was dragging Jetta, holding her by a wrist. She looked like a terrified, half-grown boy, so small was she beside this giant. But the woman's lines of her, and the long dark hair streaming about her white face and over her shoulders, were unmistakable. "His daughter." De Boer was chuckling. "The little Jetta." * * * * * All this had happened in certainly no more than five minutes. I realized that no alarm had been raised: the bandits had managed it all with reasonable quiet. There were six of the bandits here, and De Boer, who towered over us all. I saw him now as a swaggering giant of thirty-odd, with a heavy-set smooth-shaved, handsome face. He held Jetta off. "Damn, how you have grown, Jetta." Someone said, "She knows too much." And someone else, "We will take her with us. If you leave her here, De Boer--" "Why should I leave her? Why? Leave her--for Perona?" Then I think that for the first time Jetta saw her father's body lying sprawled on the path. She cried, "Philip!" Then she half turned and murmured: "Father!" She wavered, almost falling. "Father--" She went down, fainting, falling half against me and against De Boer, who caught her slight body in his arms. "Come, we'll get back. Drag him!" "But you can't carry that girl out like that, De Boer." "Into the house: there is an open door. Hans, go out and bring the car around to this side. Give me the cloaks. There is no alarm yet." De Boer chuckled again. "Perona was nice to keep the police off this street to-night!" We went into the kitchen. An auto-car, which to the village people might have been there on Spawn's mining business, slid quietly up to the side entrance. A cloak was thrown over Jetta. She was carried like a sack and put into the car. I suddenly found an opportunity to break loose. I leaped and struck one of the men. But the others were too quickly on me. The kitchen table went over with a crash. Then something struck me on the back of the head: I think it was the handle of De Boer's great knife. The kitchen and the men struggling with me faded. I went into a roaring blackness. CHAPTER XI _Aboard the Bandit Flyer_ I was dimly conscious of being inside the cubby of the car, with bandits sitting over me. The car was rolling through the village streets. Ascending. We must be heading for Spawn's mine. I thought of Jetta. Then I heard her voice and felt her stir beside me.