ng to cling to her.

Then she was sitting on the shingle very ill and Raft was coming back to
her, running.

The fight was over and the beasts had flown, left and right, she could
see them crawling like ants away up on the higher ground. They had
dropped their knives and the knives were lying here and there on the
shingle where also lay four dead bodies including the body of Chang.

Ten minutes ago there had been fifteen live Chinamen on that beach.

Raft was bleeding from a cut on the arm, his face was gashed above the
beard, a knife had ripped his coat and the back of his left hand shewed
another wound.

He was laughing and carrying on like a man in drink and now that her
stomach was relieved an extraordinary light-headedness seized her. Like
Raft, she seemed drunk.

She had been snatched for a moment into a world where to kill was the
only alternative to death or worse than death. For a moment she had
lived in the Stone Age, she had fought like a savage animal and with the
fury of the female, more terrific than the rage of the male. She had
been pushed to the edge of things, and it was she who had turned the
fight. The man she had killed was in the act of knifing Raft in the
back.

"The boat!" cried Raft.

She struggled to her feet, steadied herself, and came to the boat. They
pushed it out till it was nearly water borne; she scrambled in, he
followed, and pushed off. Out in the bay the high black cliffs rose
above them as if pushed by a scene shifter, the light-headed laughing
raving feeling left her, and as they came alongside of the barque to
starboard and tied up to the channel plates she was clear headed and
calm and able to get on board by the channel without assistance.

On the deck she tottered and fell in the dead swoon of exhaustion.

It is a long journey to the Stone Age and back and the man or woman who
makes it is never quite, quite the same again.

CHAPTER XXXII

THE OPIUM SMOKERS

Raft had never seen a female swoon before. He thought for a moment that
she had dropped dead and the shock of the business pulled him together
like a douche of cold water. Then he saw that she was breathing and took
heart, rubbing her hands and poking her in the ribs and calling on her
to pull herself together. He would have been more frightened only that
he put her condition down to her general unaccountableness in some ways.

In less than five minutes she had come to and was leaning on her elbow
an