“Yes,” she said, and her voice was tense with the effort to keep it from breaking. “He is in league with the men of Oku. I knew it, and Captain Warden warned the authorities at home about him, but no one here would listen. Oh, Mr. Hume, it is a dreadful thing to say, but rather than fall into that man’s power I would kill myself.”
“You surely don’t imagine that we would agree to those terms, do you?”
Hume was almost indignant, but Evelyn flung herself on her knees and lifted her clasped hands in agony to the star–studded sky.
“What else can I do?” she wailed. “My life is broken. I have nothing left to live for. If I refuse this offer of peace, it means that all your lives are forfeit—yours and your wife’s, and Lord Fairholme’s, and those of the officer and men who came here in the launch from Ibi. Tell him I agree. I will go to this man. But make the chief promise to spare you and the others. I must know first that you are safe. Then—O God, pardon me!—then—I——”
“My dear girl—which of us would purchase a few more hours of life at such a price?”
“But you do not understand,” she blazed forth. “If the death of one can save many why shouldn’t the one die? We can’t hope to resist these men; there are thousands of them. And unless I fall by my own hand, they may capture me unharmed after you have given your lives uselessly in my defense. Oh, pity me and pray for me, but do not let me be responsible for the slaughter of the few friends I possess in the world!”
She could no longer restrain her tears. The dark blue dome that typified the heaven to which she looked for mercy was blotted out of sight. She cowered as though from a blow, and wept pitifully. Then a voice rang out from the compound directly in front of where she knelt. As the opening syllables reached her ears, though she understood no word that was uttered, her surcharged brain harbored a new dread, for the man who was speaking spoke in Warden’s voice—Warden, whom she had learned to regard as dead these months past. Of course, grief and fear had driven her mad! She swept away the tears that blurred her vision, and peered through the rails of the veranda, but she saw only a cloaked Arab who had stepped forth into the moonlight, and was now addressing stern warnings to the amazed Loanda. And fantasy played her distracted senses another strange trick. The face of the native chief was plainly visible. She watched its expression change from sheer wonderment to baffled rage, and it seemed to her that it was not Loanda who glowered at the Arab who harangued him, but the scowling mask carved on the gourd by Domenico Garcia.
Oh, yes, she was truly mad. She realized it herself, but the others would never suspect it. Then the persistence of the notion brought relief to her aching heart. A kindly delirium might carry her through the ordeal that lay before her. She no longer feared insanity, rather did she welcome it, and now was her chance to act while she was brave and would not flinch from that which she conceived was her duty.
But why was that tall Arab still talking in Warden’s voice, and why did the stalwart savage seem to threaten him with furious gesture? Even while she was gazing between the wooden bars of the railing, she saw Loanda grasp his spear menacingly, whereupon the Arab laughed—how like it was to Warden’s laugh of good–natured raillery!—and a couple of Hausa soldiers appeared, with rifles held suggestively, as men hold shotguns when they expect a rabbit to scuttle out of a spinney.
Again, being still under the spell of that sudden lunacy, she heard the Arab say in English, and more amazingly than ever in Warden’s very tones: