"Do that," said the sergeant, "and he may escape."
"Come, then," she said, addressing Mr. Spranger and Julian; "but not you, you bloodhound," turning on the man. "Not you! Come, I will tell you everything. I will save him."
While, making her way through the others as though she still ruled supreme in the house, and followed by the two men, she led the way to a small parlour situated upon the same floor they were on.
[CHAPTER XXXII.]
THE SHARK'S TOOTH REEF
Meanwhile the night grew on, and with it there was that accompaniment which is so common in the tropics: the wind rising, and from blowing lightly soon sprang up into what the sailors call half a gale.
Now and again, far away to the east, flashes of rusty red lightning might be seen also, the almost sure heralds of a storm later.
The wind blew, too, over the dense masses of orange groves and other vegetation which go to form the tropical jungle that hereabout fringes the seashore; compact masses that, to many endeavouring to arrive at that shore, would offer an impenetrable, an impassable, barrier. Though not so to those acquainted with the vicinity and used to threading the jungle, nor to the Indians and half-castes whose huts and cabins bordered on that jungle, since they knew every spot where passage might be made, and the coast thereby reached at last.
Zara knew also each of those passages well, and threaded them now with the confidence born of familiarity; with, too, the stern determination to arrive at the end she had sworn to attain, if such attainment were possible.
She had left the room where Madame Carmaux had been confronted, not only by her but by all the others, in the manner described; had left it suddenly, though mysteriously, even as to her maddened brain a thought had sprung, dispelling for the moment all the agony and passion with which that brain was racked. The thought that, as she had sent the man she loved to his doom, so, also, it might not yet be too late to avert that doom--to save him.