A WOMAN AND A GHOST
place, if there's one safer than another. But here there wasn't, so I thought I might as well do the proper thing. We met them right by the water'sedge, and the first I made out was the witch herself, in sheepskins like the rest of them, white as a sheet, but with that infernal mark absolutely blazing. She was between Peter Vassip and a tall man I didn't know—I found out afterwards that he was the Englishman Dunstanbury—and the three came straight at us. She cried: 'The King! the King!' and behind us we heard Lukovitch and his lot crying: 'The King! the King!'
"Our fellows didn't like it, that's the truth. They were uneasy in their minds about that job of poor old Mistitch's, and they feared the witch like the devil. The heart was out of them; one lad near me burst out crying. A witch and a ghost didn't seem pleasant things to fight. Oh, it was all nonsense, but you know what fellows like that are. Their cry of 'The King!' and the sight of the woman caused a moment's hesitation. It was enough to give them the drop on us. But the Colonel never hesitated; he flung himself straight at her, and fired as he sprang. I just saw what happened before I got a crack on the crown of the head from the butt-end of a rifle, which knocked me out of time. As the Colonel fired, Peter Vassip flung himself in front of her, and took the bullet in his own body. Dunstanbury jumped right on the Colonel, cut him on the arm so that he dropped his revolver, and grappled with him. Dunstanbury dropped his sword, and the Colonel's wasn't drawn. It was just a tussle. They were tussling when the blood came flowing down into my eyes from the wound on my head; I couldn't see anything more; I fainted. Just as I went off I heard somebody cry:
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