She tried to speak—to say that she would not scream again if they would only tell what they wanted—take her purse and its contents—but only let her alone. But she could only mutter a meaningless jumble of sounds with that fishy hand over her mouth, pressing cruelly on her lips.
"Can you carry her, and keep her from screaming?" asked the man, who had pulled some cords from his pocket and was quickly tying Amy's hands. Then he fastened a rag over her mouth, and poor Amy, who came out of a half-faint, was too late to add her voice to Betty's.
"Carry her—no, she'll struggle like a cat!" muttered the old woman. "You'll have to help."
"Help! Haven't I got my hands full?" he demanded. "Where are some of the others? They ought to be back now. They knew this chance might come any time."
"They have been lying in wait for us," thought Betty. It was one of the many ideas that raced through her brain at express-train speed. "That is why this old woman wanted us to come to her hut."
"There's some one now!" exclaimed the man, leaning up from having put a cord around Amy's ankles as she lay on a sand hill.
"If it isn't some one she's brought by her yells," snarled the fishwife.
"No, it's Jake, thank goodness!" muttered the man, as a rough-looking specimen, the counterpart of himself, peered around a dune. "Get busy here, Jake, and truss up that other—cat!" the first man ordered.
"All right, Pete," was the answer. "Got any rope?"
"Here's some," and the one addressed as Pete kicked over some net-cord toward the newcomer.