The next instant he was off to rouse his men, and she was on the bottom step giving Am-ma his orders, short, sharp, clear.
But when Lance came back again to look out what arms and ammunition he could lay hands on, he found her, in his room, sorting cartridges as if she had done it all her life; and her face turned to him all aglow and splendid.
"We shall manage it! Am-ma's gone. He didn't want to, but I told him I'd kill the baby if he didn't. I suppose it was wrong,"--though her woman's tongue sought speech, her woman's hands stuck to their work--"but I couldn't help it. I felt so savage."
"You are very brave," he said simply.
"Brave!" she echoed. "Why not? People talk as if women always had to try and not be afraid; but we are not all like that. Some of us want to fight. I do, always."
She looked it, as, when all was ready, she leant, straining her eyes into the darkness for a hint of Am-ma's return. "He must come," she muttered to herself, "he shall come!"
And he did. A bigger wave came sweeping up to the wall as a herald, and then a voice calling for a rope. Half a dozen were ready posted in the men's hands from various points of vantage. They flew outwards; one, from Am-ma's hands inwards to a group holding a lantern on the steps. So, with a silent haul, the pioneers had the raft stopped, and sidling slowly back to mooring against the wall.
Then Lance turned to Erda hesitating, divided between his loyalty to Vincent, and to her.
"The palace ought to be warned," he said briefly--"if I go there ahead on Am-ma's craft, I could pick you up on your way down. Could you manage?"
She gave a look round on the men, eager with the sudden excitement, with the rush, with the very novelty of it all, and laughed--positively laughed. "Manage? Yes! of course I can manage--havildar! see those cartridges are put well back out of the wet--stay! bring down that table, someone, and give it a lash--"