He remained seated until they were out of sight. Not on any consideration would he have given Van Bleit the satisfaction of watching him rise and proceed on his way with his arms in their present undignified position. When the two men finally disappeared from view he got up, and walking painfully, for the fall from his horse had injured him, made his way slowly back towards the hut. The riders had passed quite close behind it after climbing the rise, little guessing that it was tenanted. The noise of the horses’ hoofs awoke Tottie. She rubbed her eyes, and half sat up, and so, resting on her elbow, remained still, listening, till the sounds died away in the distance and complete silence reigned once more. No suspicion crossed her mind that anything was amiss.
“Grit’s early astir,” her thoughts ran as she settled down to sleep again.
She was half-wakeful, half-dozing, when something happened that roused her fully and brought the languid eyes open with a jerk. Abruptly, without warning, the light from the doorless exit was obscured, and a man’s figure, bending from the waist, entered, and, straightening itself, stood upright, looking uncertainly about with eyes unaccustomed to the dimness, upon unfamiliar surroundings.
Tottie sat up on her improvised mattress of bush and dried rushes and stared in amaze at the appearance presented by the intruder. The swollen, inflamed face with the ugly weals across it was scarcely recognisable, the blood running down the chin on to the front of his shirt gave it a savage, even a sinister look, that was strangely repellent. She wondered why he made no effort to wipe the blood away, and noticed that he kept his hands behind him, but did not realise that this was owing to compulsion, until he turned suddenly about and requested her shortly to undo the “damned knots.”
“Good God! Grit,” she said, “what’s happened?”
“Van Bleit’s scored this time,” he answered. “It’s first game to him... But the rubber isn’t won yet. I’ve merely got my deserts for being a gullible idiot.”
She worked at the knots with her teeth, and after a while unbound his raw and bleeding wrists and flung the rope to the floor.
“My word! but they’ve used you ill,” she said... “If I’d only guessed...”
Lawless made no response. He was peering with half-blinded eyes at a huddled object on the ground that he had taken for a bundle of old rags, but now that his sight was growing used to the obscurity discovered to be the sleeping form of a native woman, who lay curled up against the mud wall, like an animal, with her superb arms flung high above her head. She was either fast asleep or feigning slumber, for she made neither sound nor movement, but lay like a dead woman, save for the gentle rise and fall of her bosom under the ochre blanket that formed its sole covering.
“What is the meaning of that?” he said sternly, pointing to the recumbent figure, his burning gaze on Tottie’s face.