Colina would have none of his reasoning. "These are just the dangerous ideas my father warned me against!" she cried passionately. "This is how you make the natives discontented and unruly!"
"You will not listen to me!" he cried in despair.
"Listen to you! I see him lying there—helpless. I am sick with compassion for him and with hatred against the creatures who did it. And you dare to attack him, to excuse them! I will not endure it!"
"I am not attacking him. Right or wrong, he has brought about a disastrous situation. He's the first to suffer. We're all standing on the edge of a volcano. We are five whites here, and three hundred miles from the nearest of our kind. If we want to save him and save ourselves we've got to face the facts."
Of this Colina heard one sentence. "Do you mean, to say that father brought this on himself?" she demanded, breathlessly angry.
Ambrose made a helpless gesture.
"I am to understand that you justify the breed?" she persisted.
"You have no right to put words into my mouth!"
Colina repeated like an automaton. "Do you think the breed was justified in shooting my father?"
"I will not answer."