Every drop of blood in my body seemed throbbing in my head just back of my
ears, and all the rest of me was cold and tense with the strain. It was
like waiting on a fearsome black day of thunder for the storm to break.

Then I heard a movement close to me where I lay on the ground, and, like
the lightning out of the thundercloud, there came the click of steel on
flint and I breathed soundlessly. It was, at all events, human.

And then my breath caught again. For the tiny lightning flash that came out
of the flint lit, with one brief gleam, the face of the man to whom my
death was as necessary as the breath of life,--whose presence there held
most dreadful menace for us both,--Torode of Herm.

For one moment life stood still with me. For here, in this close darkness,
were we three within arm's length of one another;--the man I had reason to
fear and hate above any other on earth, and the price of whose life was my
own, a price I would not pay; the woman whose life was dearer to me than my
own, for whom I would gladly pay any price, even the utmost; and myself, by
force of circumstances, the unwilling link that had brought them both
there, and the menace to both their lives, for Torode came for me and
Carette came with me.

The wheels of life began to turn for me again, and my hand felt stealthily
along the ledge at my side, where George Hamon's pistol had lain ever since
he gave it to me.

Thoughts surged in my brain like the long western waves in the Boutiques,
all in a wild confusion. This man had spared my life. He had come to take
it. Carette was at stake.