“Mr. Neeland, can’t you move? Try! Try to break loose––”
Her voice died away in a whisper as a flash of bluish flame broke out close to the ceiling overhead, where the three bombs were slung.
“Oh, God!” she faltered. “The fuses are afire!”
For an instant her brain reeled; she instinctively recoiled as though to fling herself out into the darkness. Then, in a second, her extended arm grew rigid, slanted upward; the pistol exploded once, twice, the third time; the lighted bombs in their sling, released by the severed rope, fell to the bed, the fuses sputtering and fizzling.
Instantly the girl fired again at the big jug of water on the bracket over the head of the bed; a deluge drenched the bed underneath; two fuses were out; one still snapped and glimmered and sent up little jets and rings of vapour; but as the water soaked into the match the cinder slowly died until the last spark fell from the charred wet end and went out on the drenched blanket.
She waited a little longer, then with an indescribable look at the helpless man below, she withdrew her head, pushed herself free, hung to the invisible rope ladder for a moment, swaying against the open port. His eyes were fastened on her where she dangled there against the darkness betwixt sky and sea, oscillating with the movement of the ship, her pendant figure now gilded by the light from the room, now phantom dim as she swung outward.
As the roll of the ship brought her head to the level of the port once more, she held up her pistol, shook it, and laughed at him: 250
“Now do you believe that I can shoot?” she called out. “Answer me some time when that mocking tongue of yours is free!”
Then, climbing slowly upward into darkness, the light, falling now across her body, now athwart her skirt, gilded at last the heels of her shoes; suddenly she was gone; then stars glittered through the meshes of the shadowy, twitching ladder which still barred the open port. And finally the ladder was pulled upward out of sight.
He waited. After a little while—an interminable interval to him—he heard somebody stealthily trying the handle of the door; then came a pause, silence, followed by a metallic noise as though the lock were being explored or picked.