She let go the whip-lash with a resounding crack in the direction of the menacing beast. He was of the large homed kind that would have been the delight of a Plaza de Toros, and looked horribly formidable, tossing his white sharp horns in the moonlight. Then he charged.
Edala did not yield an inch as she stood over the body of her friend. She calculated her distance to a nicety, and as coolly as if she had been fly-fishing, she sent out the whip-lash again. Fortunately the charge was a half-hearted one, and the cutting voerslag, catching the enemy full in the eyes, brought him up as sharp as though the cruel banderillas had suddenly been stuck in his withers in the plaza in old Spain. She gave him no law. Twice in rapid succession again she gave him the voerslag, and the blinded beast, mad with pain, backed, then trotted unsteadily away.
Edala’s breathing came in spasmodic gasps as she watched him out of sight, and the reaction made her knees tremble beneath her. Oh hang it! She must keep up, she told herself. She could not afford to follow Evelyn’s example, or what would become of them both? So this girl, with the glorious gold-crowned head, alone there under circumstances of peril and horror, started to work out the situation for the safety of both.
“Come Evelyn. Pull yourself together, and get up!” she cried, half carrying, half dragging the other to the house door. “Lord! I shall have to shy a bucket of water over her yet!” she added almost savagely, panting from her exertion.
But this drastic remedy proved unnecessary, for Evelyn opened her eyes, then sat up, staring about her in a dazed kind of way.
“What is it? I’ve been dreaming—something horrible,” she said.
“Yes, you have. Never mind. Buck up now, and come inside. It’s beastly cold out here.”
“Why yes. I feel tottery though. Oh Edala, what a fool you must think me.”
“No. Only, don’t do it again,” was the reply, accompanied by a curious laugh. Edala was thinking—though not resentfully—of how a day or two ago the other was lecturing her: in a way talking down to her, while disclaiming any intent to do so. Now she was the one upon whom everything depended. The situation was in her hands.
They went inside, and Edala mixed a glass of brandy and water.