Tom Sung came to the water's edge, a rifle (with set bayonet) in his hand. Connor stepped out, holding the boat. The Kid, with a furtive, glance at the big yellow fighter, and the abruptly silent shadowy group on the bank, cautiously got out an automatic pistol and held it beside him on the thwart. Dixie said sharply, for Connor's ears: “Put up that gun, Jim!” The Kid obeyed. She spoke then to Connor direct. “Tell your man we want that junk,” she said. “Get out these other boats and take it, quick. Then we'll start back up-stream.” For a moment Connor was nonplussed. The girl's assumption of authority was complete. Even the slow-thinking Tom Sung felt her presence and turned abruptly from himself toward her. But, though angered, Connor controlled himself. She meant, after all, business. Dixit wasn't a girl to make careless mistakes. She knew, none better, what any success, little or big, might be worth in risks run. So, speaking sharply, he gave his orders to Tom. Quietly the twenty or more outlaw soldiers came down to the boats and pushed off. Rowing and paddling they crept up on the junk. A drowsy watchman peeped over at the rail, forward. Then they were alongside. Catching at the mooring poles, the soldiers stepped out on the wide sponson that curved down, amidships, nearly to the water-line. Quickly, rifles slung on backs but revolvers at their girdles and knives in their teeth, they went up the ropes hand over hand, their bare feet dinging monkeylike to the smooth side. There were cries aboard now, and a confusion of running feet. The first soldier to get a leg over the rail came tumbling back with a split skull, bounding off the sponson into the water and sinking as he drifted away. Connor and the Kid caught together at the sponson. Connor stepped out; and calling on a belated soldier to give him a back, climbed laboriously, puffing but determined, up over the rail, pausing at the top only to call back for the Kid to follow. But that worthy hesitated, crouching, clutching at the boat painter. “I've got to hold the boat here!” he shouted back; but Connor had disappeared. There was much noise up there now--shouts, groans, appalling screeches, shots, and that insistent pattering of feet. Dixie, watching critically the crouching figure on the sponson--for the Kid was shivering and making little sounds, obviously caught in the acute physical distress into which extreme sudden fear will at times plunge a man--called abruptly: “Jim--look up!” A nearly naked Chinese was lowering himself in a deliberate gingerly manner down a moving rope nearly overhead. “Kill him, Jim!” Dixie added. Singling out her clear voice from the tumult, the yellow man looked fearfully down. The Kid, at the same moment, looked up; then, fumbling in a curiously absent way for his pistol, glanced back at Dixie. “I'll hold the boat,” said she. “Go on--kill him!” She sat quietly, one thin arm reached out to the nearest mooring pole, looking steadily up.