The position was as bad as could be.
As bad as La Touche. Once let this man get the upper hand and she was lost. She would be his slave and worse. She had measured him finely. Instinct, never at fault, told her that to pull down anything above him would be meat and drink to La Touche’s true nature and that his hatred of her superiority was deepened by the fact that she was a woman.
Were she weak he would beat her and make her cook for him, trample on her, make her his woman to fetch and carry, and, if Bompard did not come back, she was here alone with him and would have to fight this thing out.
Well, she could not fight it by brooding over it, and she was not helping to look for Bompard.
She drew the knife from its sheath and held the eight inches of razor sharp steel balanced in her hand for a moment as though admiring it. Then she replaced it in the sheath and started towards the Lizard Point.
CHAPTER XIV
THE DEATH TRAPS
From the highest shoulder of the point she could see La Touche clambering over the seaward rocks.