"Do your worst! Monty'll be hunting for us two in about a minute.
We're prisoners, are we? Suit yourself!"
"You are prisoners while I choose! You could be killed in this room, removed in sacks, thrown to the sharks in the roadstead, and nobody the wiser! But I have no intention of killing you. As it happens, that would not suit my purpose!"
We both glanced behind us involuntarily. It may be that we both heard a footstep, but it is always difficult to say certainly after the event. At any rate, while in the act of turning our heads, two of the three Arabs, who had previously left the room, threw nooses over them and bound our arms to our sides with the jiffy-swiftness only sailors know. The third man put the finishing touches, and presently adjusted gags with a neatness and solicitude worthy of the Inquisition.
"Throw them!" she ordered, and in a second our heels were struck from under us and I was half stunned by the impact of my head against the solid floor (for all the floors of that great place were built to resist eternity).
"Now!" she said. "Show them knives!"
We were shown forthwith the ugliest, most suggestive weapons I have ever seen—long sliver-thin blades sharper than razors. The Arabs knelt on our chests (their knees were harder and more merciless than wooden clubs) and laid the blades, edge-upward, on the skin of our throats.
"Let them feel!" she ordered.
I felt a sharp cut, and the warm blood trickled down over my jugular to the floor. I knew it was only a skin-cut, but did not pretend to myself I was enjoying the ordeal.
"Now!" she said.
The Arabs stepped away and she came and stood between us, looking down at one and then the other.