He went still nearer to her. ‘Give me a kiss, then; one kiss—I won’t ask for more; one kiss from those lips, and you shall go free. Men have ruined themselves for a kiss. I will.’
‘Coward!’ she ejaculated.
‘Coward!’ he repeated. ‘Coward, am I? Then I’ll be a coward, and you shall kiss me whether you will or not.’
He put a hand on her shoulder. As she shrank back from his lustrous eyes, with an involuntary scream, a figure sprang out of the dinghy a few feet away. With a single blow, neatly directed to Mr Jackson’s ear, Mr Jackson was stretched senseless on the deck. Prince Aribert of Posen stood over him with a revolver. It was probably the greatest surprise of Mr Jackson’s whole life.
‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said the Prince to Nella, ‘my being here is the simplest thing in the world, and I will explain it as soon as I have finished with this fellow.’
Nella could think of nothing to say, but she noticed the revolver in the Prince’s hand.
‘Why,’ she remarked, ‘that’s my revolver.’
‘It is,’ he said, ‘and I will explain that, too.’
The man at the wheel gave no heed whatever to the scene.