Those who were gaining upon him were Pomp, the negro, and Brazzier himself. But the fact that they were gaining upon him was no cause for the fugitive falling down and yielding without a struggle. He still had his sheath-knife, which he grasped with a despairing feeling as he realized, during those awful seconds, that complete, disastrous failure, instead of the brilliant success he had counted upon, had overtaken him at last.
The pursuers gained rapidly, and not one-half the distance was passed, when all three of the men were almost within striking distance, for Redvignez was at the elbow of his companions. Captain Bergen looked over his shoulder, and was about to throw his back against a palm-tree, with the view of turning at bay and fighting to the last, when, like the historical John Smith of our own earlier times, his lack of attention to his feet precipitated the very fate against which he was struggling. His feet struck some obstruction, and being exhausted from his extraordinary exertion, he pitched forward and fell on his face. As he went down he was conscious of hearing two widely different sounds--one the exultant cries of the pursuers, and the other the terrified scream of a little girl.
Captain Bergen attempted to rise, but Redvignez and Brazzier were upon him, and the knife of the latter was upraised with the purpose of ending the matter then and there forever, when the cry of the child was heard the second time, and little Inez sprang, like Pocahontas, between the uplifted arm and the intended victim.
"Oh, don't hurt him! Please don't hurt him! Please, please don't hurt him, 'cause I love him!" pleaded the agonized child, with all the earnestness of her nature.
The position of the prostrate captain attempting to rise, and the little one interceding for him, was such that the mutineer hesitated for the moment, for he could not strike without endangering her life. Seeing this, with the wonderful quickness which sometimes comes over the youngest child in such a crisis, Inez persistently forced her body with amazing quickness in the way of the poised knife as it started to descend more than once--the other two holding back for their leader to finish the work.