Orissa shook her head.
"No arms at all—not even a hatpin?"
"Nothing whatever to use for defense."
The man was quite near now. Yes; it was Ramon Ganza. His clothes were torn by the rocks and hung around him in rags, and where he had fallen the thick, slimy oil clung to them. His face was smeared with dust and grime and the whole aspect of the outlaw was ghastly and repulsive—perhaps rendered more acute by the jewelled rings that loaded his fingers.
He was obliged to step with more care as he neared the aëroplane, in which crouched the two girls, and finally he came to a halt on a hummock a few paces away. The oil lay more thickly around the Aircraft than elsewhere, and Ramon Ganza eyed it suspiciously. Then he spoke, resting his hands on his hips and leering insolently at Sybil and Orissa.
"So, I have caught you, then," he cried. "Why did you try to escape?"
"For the same reason you are trying to escape, perhaps," retorted Orissa, summoning what courage she could command. "But I warn you that our friends will presently come for us, and—you may not care to meet them."
He uttered an angry snarl and cast a quick glance around the valley. In all its broad stretch not a person other than themselves was visible.
Ramon sat down on his knoll, breathing heavily from his long run.
"Yes, I have run away," he admitted, bitterness and hate in his tone. "I can fight ten—or twenty, perhaps—with my single hand; but not fifty. They have come to put me in prison, those fiends over there," jerking his thumb toward the bay, "and seeing they were too strong for me to oppose, I came away. It is what you call discreet—eh?—which is more safe, if less noble, than valor. But they have the island and they will hunt me down. And once more I shall laugh at them—once more Ramon Ganza will defy them all!"