“I will make them well,” said the woman, taking a little woven grass bag from her sarong, and drawing therefrom a small brass phial and a steel implement, whose use Helen did not then comprehend.
The woman spoke to her then in an imperative tone, stepped forward, and, taking her arm, tried to force her into a sitting posture; but with a cry of anger Helen thrust her back and ran to the door, dragging aside the curtain, and trying to pass through.
The effort was vain, and uttering some sharp angry commands, the woman advanced to her once more, speaking rapidly in her own tongue, and before Helen could avoid her rapid action, she found herself pinioned by the wrists.
What followed was, as Helen afterwards recalled it, one frantic struggle against superior power. She remembered crying loudly for help, being held back upon the matting, and suffering intense pain, as her tormentors held her lips apart, some of them scolding virulently, others laughing and ridiculing her; and then a feeling of exhaustion came on, and nature could do no more than beneficently bring upon her complete ignorance of the indignity to which she, an English lady, was forced to submit, by steeping her senses in a profound swoon, leaving her at the mercy of Murad’s slaves.
Volume Two—Chapter Eighteen.
Doctor Bolter Makes Plans.
“I don’t think I can do any good if I stay here,” said Doctor Bolter to himself. “I’ve done everything I could think of, and I am ready to own that it is very terrible; but a month has gone by now, and a doctor who is so used to facing death and seeing people die does not—cannot feel it as others do.
“That is, of course, when a man—his brother-in-law—is dead; but I don’t even know that poor Arthur Rosebury is dead, and as we say, while there’s life there’s hope.