orning he had had doubts as to his course of action, but this
overheard scuffle decided the question. Number One was a doomed man--one
of those beings whom it is unlucky to help. Even as he walked in the
open with a fine air of unconcern, Wang wondered that no sound of any
sort was to be heard inside the house. For all he knew, the white woman
might have been scuffling in there with an evil spirit, which had of
course killed her. For nothing visible came out of the house he watched
out of the slanting corner of his eye. The sunshine and the silence
outside the bungalow reigned undisturbed.

But in the house the silence of the big room would not have struck an
acute ear as perfect. It was troubled by a stir so faint that it could
hardly be called a ghost of whispering from behind the curtain.

Ricardo, feeling his throat with tender care, breathed out admiringly:

"You have fingers like steel. Jimminy! You have muscles like a giant!"

Luckily for Lena, Ricardo's onset had been so sudden--she was winding
her two heavy tresses round her head--that she had no time to lower her
arms. This, which saved them from being pinned to her sides, gave her a
better chance to resist. His spring had nearly thrown her down. Luckily,
again, she was standing so near the wall that, though she was driven
against it headlong, yet the shock was not heavy enough to knock all the
breath out of her body. On the contrary, it helped her first instinctive
attempt to drive her assailant backward.

After the first gasp of a surprise that was really too over-powering for
a cry, she was never in doubt of the nature of her danger. She defended
herself in the full, clear knowledge of it, from the force of instinct
which is the true source of every great display of energy, and with a
determination which could hardly have been expected from a girl who,
cornered in a dim corridor by the red-faced, stammering Schomberg, had
trembled with shame, disgust, and fear; had drooped, terrified, before
mere words spluttered out odiously by a man who had never in his life
laid his big paw on her.

This new enemy's attack was simple, straightforward violence. It was not
the slimy, underhand plotting to deliver her up like a slave, which
had sickened her heart and had made her feel in her loneliness that her
oppressors were too many for her. She was no longer alone in the world
now. She resisted without a moment of faltering, because she was no
longer deprived of mo