With it floated the dead horse, dragging down the other wheeler beneath the water.

It was awful to see his struggles in the glare of the lightning, but at last he sank and choked.
Meanwhile, sounding sharply and clearly through the din and hubbub of the storm, came the cracking of the three rifles whenever the flashes showed the position of the cart to the murderers on the bank.

Mouti was lying still in the bottom of it on the bed-plank, a bullet between his broad shoulders and another in his skull: but John felt that his life was yet whole in him, though something had hissed past his face and stung it.

Instinctively he reached across the cart and drew Jess on to his knee, and cowered over her, thinking dimly that perhaps his body would protect her from the bullets.
_Rip! rip!_ through the wood and canvas; _phut! phut!_ through the air; but some merciful power protected them, and though one cut John's coat and two passed through the skirt of Jess's dress, not a bullet struck them.

Very soon the shooting began to grow wild, then that dense veil of rain came down and wrapped them so closely that even the lightning could not reveal their whereabouts to the assassins on the bank.
"Stop shooting," said Frank Muller; "the cart has sunk, and there is an end of them.