I say it was prodigious, but then the spur was more than the
ordinary, and the woman herself was far out of the common both in
thews and intelligence; and the end of the leap left her with five
fingers lodged in the sill of the arrow-slit from which I watched.
Even then she must have slipped back if she had been left to
herself, for the sill sloped, and the stone was finely smooth; but
I shot out my hand and gripped hers by the wrist, and instantly she
clambered up with both knees on the sills, and her fingers twined
round to grip my wrist in her turn.

And now you will suppose she gushed out prayers and promises,
thinking only of safety and enlargement. There was nothing of
this. With savage panting wordlessness she took fresh grip on the
sharpened bone with her spare hand, and lunged with it desperately
through the arrow-slit. With the hand that clutched mine she drew
me towards her, so as to give the blows the surer chance, and so
unprepared was I for such an attack, and with such fierce
suddenness did she deliver it, that the first blow was near giving
me my quietus. But I grappled with the poor frantic creature as
gently as might be--the stone of the wall separating us always--and
stripped her of her weapon, and held her firmly captive till she
might calm herself.

"That was an ungrateful blow," I said. "But for my hand you'd
have slipped and be the sport of a tiger's paw this minute."

"Oh, I must kill some one," she panted, "before I am killed
myself."

"There will be time enough to think upon that some other day;