He Saves that which he Loves the Best
gered in the rocket's trail, and saw it flare and spread almost directly above his head. He cheered aloud, shouting to his comrades the glad news that they were within appreciable yards of the shore.
In their turn, they cheered breathlessly; and simultaneously the fire of the Tawareks dwindled to a perceptible extent. A second rocket screamed its way to the skies and burst aloft with a deafening roar—a wrecking rocket, that.
From the Tawareks came their first human utterances—a chorus of fearful shrieks; they fired no longer. A third rocket swept inland, exploding in their neighborhood; they shrieked again, and their fire died out completely.
The battle of the sandhills was over.
O'Rourke, breathing a blessing upon the saints who had preserved him, checked the now almost automatic firing of the fledgling emperor and hurried him back to the beach; they burst from among the dunes and into sight of the yacht in company with others of the fighters.
Their fellows arrived momentarily, to throw themselves down on the wet sands and pant out their exhaustion. O'Rourke counted them as they came on and estimated a full roster—that is to say, none had fallen since his adoption of Tawarek strategy.
Between the yacht and the shore, boats were plying. The captain of the vessel had waked to his duty, and now rapid-fire guns coughed, and Gatlings jabbered, sending a storm of missiles over the heads of those on the beach, to fall far inland about the ears of the fleeing natives.
O'Rourke sat him down upon the sands and produced a cigar, which he trimmed with careful nicety and lit.
"Your majesty," he told le petit Lemercier, "the Empire
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