But from the preparations of Dick Bellamy dignity was altogether absent.
From the dirty cloth he unwrapped Mut-mut's baag-nouk, slipped his right hand into its straps and rings, and sank to his knees on the floor of the carriage, facing the door and its open, unblinded window.
Leaning to his right, he lifted the corner blind away, bringing his left cheek against the glass; and from this spy-hole kept that eye on the point where the door of the next compartment should just show itself, were it opened at right-angles to the train in letting a man creep out upon the footboard.
And then, as he waited, came a dreadful thought: the door on this side of the compartment, the train running on the left-hand track, was hinged, of course, upon its forward jamb, and must therefore be passed, by one creeping from the direction of the engine, before it could be opened so as to give entrance. On the other side the position was reversed.
Might not this advantage of the door defended only by the girl have been noted by the men on the other side of that partition?
And she? Her back was to the engine and her corner blind pulled down. She would see nothing till her door began to open; and even had she nerve for killing, she could not shoot; for, in pity of her white hands, he had fixed the safety-catch of Melchard's gun.
He pictured the moment's wavering, and a struggle, ending, perhaps, in a double fall from the train.
While still his eye was steady at the loophole, his mind reached the decision to change his dispositions. But before he could move to rise the black, upright line of the enemy's door swung slowly into his field of vision. His position at the window gave him a bare inch to see it in, but the sight lifted his fighting soul into the heaven of certain success.
Still watching, he saw that the door's edge remained steady, fixed, he argued, by the hand of the man that watched his companion, too low for Dick's line of sight, handing himself along by the brass rail, nearer and nearer.
While that door was held, Amaryllis was safe.