He was ten feet away from her when he sprang, and six feet distant when her pistol cracked like a vicious whip lash. In the act of firing she threw herself backwards. The brown boy, carried irresistibly forward by the impetus of his leap, fell diagonally across Madame's body, the outstretched dagger-tipped arm passing close over her face. He fell across her, pinning her down, and the hammock bed creaked and swung with the shock. The stricken boy lay across Madame, his hands and feet tearing at the deck as the bed swung, his body heaving and writhing in convulsions. Under him she lay pinned down, and felt within her own living frame every quiver and pang of his dissolution.
The hammock bed slowed down in its swing, and the hands and feet of William, Lord Topsham, trailed helplessly. His brown half-naked body was quiet now. The sudden leap, the quick deadly shot, the last agonies, had not filled up sixty seconds, yet they left Madame aged by their rapid passage. In those seconds some of her old light-heartedness had gone from her. She felt little sorrow for the Lord Topsham who had sought to slay her, and whom she had killed in the act, but her heart wept bitterly for the Willatopy whom he once had been.
The bed and the body came to rest together, and all was still.
"Marie," called Madame. There was no response from the white heap which lay where it had been flung.
"Marie," Madame cried again, "es tu morte?"
It was the silliest of enquiries, yet it penetrated the dulled ear of the sorely bruised girl.
"Oui, Madame," groaned Marie. "Je suis morte, morte, absolument."
"So that's all right," cried Madame, much relieved. The maid had risen to a lofty eminence in the opinion of the mistress, when she, inspired by her brave French blood, had sprung upon the back of the murder-filled savage. She had staked her life, and come nigh to losing her stake, to gain time for the mistress whom she had no great reason to love.
"I am pinned down and cannot move," explained Madame. "Try to open the door and then scream as loudly as you can."