"Now you take this," said Denis, handing Jimmy a length of the cut rope which he had brought with him, "and you this," giving Moseley the Deane and Adams. "Now both follow me--like mice--and do exactly what I tell you." So they crept up to the fire in the formation of an isosceles triangle. "Where are you? Where's your tree? If you don't answer I'll carve your head off!" they heard one ruffian threatening with subdued venom in the distance; his voice was at its furthest and faintest when Denis leaped on the other from behind and nipped an enormous neck with all ten fingers. "I'm not going to choke you, but you'll be shot dead if you make one sound. Here, Moseley, stick it to his ear. You understand, do you? One sound. There, then; now you'll be gagged. Jimmy, the rope." Denis felt rather sorry for his man as he went to work; he was such an elderly miscreant, so broad and squat (rather than obese), as one who had been pressed like a bale of wool. But he held his peace with stolid jowl until gagged by a double thickness of the rope that soon held him hand and foot. "Now for your mate," said Denis. As he spoke, the fellow could be heard shouting that their bird was flown; thereupon the three withdrew behind trees. "And remember," said Denis, who went last with the revolver, "if you make a sign to send him back you'll be the first." They had not a minute to wait. Their second victim came back cursing their first for sitting so unmoved over the fire. Denis peeped and saw the lean, ascetic face advancing white-hot with passion; in the last ten yards he stopped, suspicious, but not yet of the truth, for the untended fire had declined to a mere red and white remnant in his absence. "Good God, man, are you dead?" he cried, and then came running at the thought. At the same instant Denis stepped from behind his tree. "Throw up your hands before I fire!" And up they both went, but one barked and flashed on the way, and the ball whispered in Denis's ear as he took deliberate aim and shot the scoundrel down. "Take care!" he shouted to the others, rushing up. "I aimed low. He isn't dead. Don't trust him an inch!" But the man had been drilled through the sciatic nerve, and he leaped where he lay like a landed fish. He had let fall the pistol in his pain, and Moseley had the pleasure of picking up his own. "Has anybody any brandy?" asked Denis, for the wounded man looked ghastly, writhing in the starlight, and he was bearing his torments without a word; but when Moseley produced a flask, and Denis held it to him, the unbeaten brute only seized the opportunity of snatching at the revolver in his other hand. "The blackguard!" piped Doherty, as Denis disengaged without a shot. "I'd finish him for that!"