“‘Forever! Together!’ she said, and stood up beside me, chained to me by the handcuffs she had slipped on my right wrist and her left. Never you think your nerve is sound till you have felt something like that. I thought mine was—and I squalled aloud like a child at a ghost.
“‘Hush!’ she said, and her free arm pressed across my mouth.
“‘How much to let me off?’ I asked as soon as I could get breath. You see, it flashed on me that it was a trap. You can never tell, in our line, when the detectives may be after you, or what kind of a game they’ll put up. I looked around for the rest of the bunch to come and jump me, but I didn’t see a thing. Her next words put me on.
“‘The stars! The stars!’ she whispered. ‘See ours, how they light our pathway across the sea. The sea that awaits us!’
“More breath came back to me. It wasn’t a trap, then. She was only a crazy woman, that I had to get rid of. I looked down at the handcuff. It was of iron, and had dull rusted edges. A hammer would have made short work of it; but I did not have any hammer. I did not even have a stone. There would be stones in the broken land beyond the thicket. I thought I saw a way.
“‘Yes. Let’s go,’ I said.
“We set out. At the edge of the thicket was a flattish rock with small stones near it. Here I pretended to slip. I fell with my right wrist across a rock, and caught up a cobblestone with my left hand. At the first crack of the stone on the handcuff I could feel the old iron weaken. I got no chance for a second blow. Her hands were at my throat. They bit in. Then I knew it was a fight for my life.
“She was light; but she was strong like a panther. If her dress bound her, I was as bad off in my robe. At the first grip I was forced back into a bush, and sprawled there, in a tangle of branches and flying cloth. Somehow, I twisted her fingers from my throat. We struggled out into the moonlight again. I got a fair look at her face, and I guess I went mad myself, with the terror of it. The next thing I remember clearly she was quiet on the ground and I was hammering, hammering, hammering at my wrist with a blood-stained stone. I do not know if it was her blood or mine. Both, maybe, for my wrist was like pulp when the iron finally cracked open and I was free. I caught a glimpse of blood on her temple. I suppose I had hit her there with the stone. She looked dead.
“All I wanted was to think—to think—to think. How could I think with her lying there? I crept out of sight of her and kneeled down. Her star, the star I had faked for hers, was shining in my eyes like a cold glare. That very minute a wisp of cloud blew across and wiped it out, and I heard myself squeal again. I was pretty much dotty, I guess.
“While I was trying to think she came alive. She didn’t stir slow and moan like I have seen men, in my sea days, when they were knocked out. She was on her feet before I knew it, and off at a dead run. The broken handcuff went jerking and jumping around her as she ran. That was an awful night full of awful things. But the one worst sight of all—worse, even, than the finding of her afterward—was that mad figure leaping over the broken ground toward the cliff’s edge.