Verbeena, not knowing the signals, smacked her helmet hard against the desert of Sahara, matted her curls and stretched motionless, a lighted cigarette in her hand.
One could read a symbol in its curling smoke of the fiery spirit yet existent in the lithe, young, prone, boyish body as well as the indubitable indication of an unbreakable habit.
But there was so little time for reading anything, although it must be admitted that the light was excellent for even an Edison cannot vie with that real thing which you get on the Sahara.
But to get back to Verbeena. And high time too!
For the big, brown devil had her! Right in his arms. Across his horse! And wrapped up in his great, long white cloak. Not any too white either.
She—already she was beginning to feel she was she—Verbeena Mayonnaise, was caught, trapped, trussed up in the folds of that white cloak of his, utterly helpless and like a week’s wash!
It was horrible, awful, terrible and very uncomfortable.
Moreover, the humiliation of it was meticulously genuine.
And what could she do? Jiu jitsu she had but it wasn’t worth a jitney to a person in a cocoon! By the same token all her gymnasium and other athletic perfections which had trained her fit to give Georges Carpentier or Jacques Dempsey a stiff battle now went blah.
Additionally, this big heap Arab chief that had snared her she knew—thrillingly knew—was hefty.