'Of course it isn't. Don't be such a pessimist.'
Dick drummed on the boxes. 'Unless you can do a fortnight without food,' he said.
She restrained her impatience.
'Are you sure you haven't any cartridges anywhere?'
'Quite—I looked through my kit last night. I could have sworn...'
And while he explained and excused his folly, Norah wondered what would have happened half an hour before, had Dick's rifle been loaded. A sudden doubt of his resolution assailed her. With a loaded gun in his hand, would he have dominated the mutiny? In his rage he might have fired, but in cold blood she doubted if, even to secure their escape, he could have screwed himself to the killing point.
Surprisingly she was sorry. Not, I think, from any hate of the Indian, pre-eminently unlovable as he was, but from a feeling that if logic barred all other paths a man should kill. And as a woman and an aristocrat, if a life lay between her and safety, she instinctively demanded a man's love to ... eliminate the obstacle.
In the comparative comfort and security of a deck chair on an ocean liner, such sentiments seem blameworthy even in a woman. In her father's stately home in the Shires or her father-in-law's respectable legal circle in Scotland, I have no doubt that Norah, whom I have presented to you as no paragon, would have shrunk from so drastic a solution. But I suppose standards suffer when you are in danger of life in Central Africa.
In justice I record that she did not pursue the thought; she turned to wondering what Archie would have done. Probably nothing, she decided. By the time he had weighed the advantages and disadvantages of drastic action, opportunity would have flown. But when at last he moved, she admitted that Archie generally went to the heart of the matter.
Of one thing she was certain. His Scottish stubbornness would not allow him to beg from a man who had insulted him and whom he had struck. Nor would he offer money. She tried to put out of her mind that picture of her lover, pale in the dawn, unconscious of the water lapping over his feet, holding out his purse to his enemy.