“What an end for a soldier and the daughter of a soldier!” she thought, as a fit of wild desperation seized her. She wanted to get up and fight.
“Fight what?” she asked herself. Then suddenly she knew—fight those incense burners! Fight those leering apes!
At once she was on her knees. Bending low that she might avoid the fumes as much as possible, she crept toward the Buddha and the apes.
As she came close to her goal the odor was all but overpowering. She wanted to sleep. “Sleep!” She clenched her fists tight. “I must not sleep!”
At last her hands were on one of the black metal apes. She grasped its legs and pulled herself to a sitting position. The ape was solidly fastened to the floor.
“There is a way to put incense into this burner,” she told herself. “I’ll find it, open up the burner and scatter the fire on the stone floor.”
She felt the thing over, inch by inch, burning her fingers where the incense had heated the metal, but not a suggestion did she get regarding the manner in which the strange incense burner was opened.
“I—I can do nothing.” She sank down upon the floor.
For a full minute she lay there as if asleep. Then, as strength and courage returned, she dragged herself to the door and made one last attempt to drink in air from the crack beneath the door.
“I can’t die like a poisoned rat,” she told herself. “I am a soldier. I can’t die this way.” Only half conscious of what she was doing, she screamed: