“But so much depends on you. We don’t signify.”
“What depends on Maurice?” demanded Eirene, with keen curiosity. Zoe recollected herself, in part.
“Oh, well, he is the last of the name, you know,” she said.
“The last of the name of Smith?” asked Eirene innocently.
“No—er—the last of our Smiths,” Zoe managed to say, and broke into hopeless laughter, until Maurice shook her, and asked her whether she wanted the brigands to think that terror had driven her mad. It seemed that their fate was no longer in suspense, since Milosch, of all people, had come to the rescue. This was not through any softness of heart, but because, representing, as he did, the Thracian committee which directed the brigands’ movements, he had been able to paint in vivid terms the wrath and disappointment which would pervade that august body on the discovery that the prisoners whose ransom was to have added so largely to its funds had simply been wasted.
“There must be a way up the mountain,” he said, “so that we could turn aside from the path without even approaching the Roumi dogs.”
“There is,” said Zeko, “but it is such a way that a man must cling to the rocks with both hands and his toes and his teeth. How can women climb it?”
“Women can do what they are obliged to do,” said Milosch, with his evil grin.
“This settles it,” said Zoe, as Maurice translated the words. “If our lives depend on our climbing up there, or even walking any farther, why, we shall have to be killed. Look, Maurice, our moccasins are cut to pieces, and my feet are bleeding—so are Eirene’s. We can’t walk another step, and you can tell them so.”
It was unnecessary for Maurice to speak, however, for one of the brigands came in to report, with much indignation, that Zoe’s feet had left spots of blood on the track, which the rain had not quite washed off, and the rest were forced to perceive that the girls were really incapable of walking farther. Again there were suggestions of a short and sharp way out of the difficulty, and again Milosch interposed as deus ex machinâ.