The Chinks around their fire were broken up into parties playing games and smoking. By the white man’s fire sat the guitar player on a camp stool, the light full on his sharp profile, another man leaning on his elbow lay smoking cigarettes, and a woman seated on the sand, an elderly-looking woman of Jewish type, was engaged in some sort of needlework, and her hand as it moved, seemed covered with rings.
George thought he had never beheld a more sinister looking trio. The girl was nowhere to be seen.
George, Hank and Candon put their heads together.
“She’s in one of the tents,” whispered B. C., “tied up for the night most like.”
“Shall we rush them now?” asked Hank.
“Yep, get your guns ready. Look! There’s the girl! Now then, boys!”
The girl who had just left the most seaward of the tents stood for a moment with the vague light of the fire touching her. She was very small. To George, in that half moment, she seemed only a child, and the sight of her contrasted with her captors came to them as though timed to the moment.
The beach blazed out with noise, the ear-splitting explosions of the Luggers and the yells of the attackers swept the man on the sands to his feet. George saw, as one sees in a dream, the whole of the Chinese casting cards and dice and flying like leaves driven by the broom of the wind. He had a vision of Hank downing the cigarette smoker, then he got a smash on the head from a guitar and was rolling on the sands with a man who was shouting “Hell, hell, hell!” punching him to silence whilst the woman with nails in his neck was trying to strangle him, screaming all the time till Hank dragged her off, crying, “We’ve got the girl—come on—come on! We’ve got the girl!” Then the nightmare shifted and he was running, Candon in front of him with something on his shoulder that struggled and fought and screamed for help, then he was stumbling over rocks, Hank helping him, Hank laughing and whooping like a man in delirium, and shouting to the stars: “We’ve got the girl! We’ve got the girl!”
Then came the glow-worm glimmer of the lamp by the boat, and the boat with them all crowding into it, Chinks and all, and the musky smell of the Chinks, the push off and a great silence broken only by the oars and Candon’s voice crying, “Lord! she’s dead!” and Hank’s voice, “No, she ain’t, only fainted.”
The Wear Jack’s side with Charley showing a lantern, the getting on board with their helpless bundle, and the vanishing of Candon with her down the companion way to the saloon, then and only then did things shake back to reality whilst Hank took both George’s hands in his. “Bo, we’ve done it,” said Hank.