"It's nothing much," I said. "I blundered over a bit of wire they'd stretched across the path and I rather think I've cracked my collar-bone. It will be all right as soon as I've tied it up."
She knelt down beside me, and with trembling fingers set about the task of freeing my wrists. I heard her give a sudden gasp of horror as she saw the state they were in.
"Oh, the brutes!" she sobbed. "The utter brutes! How can God allow such people as Manning to exist?"
"He won't allow it much longer," I replied grimly.
The cut ends of the rope pattered down on to the floor, and, shaking myself loose, I stepped forward, a free man. Christine dropped the knife and rose unsteadily to her feet. The next moment I was crushing her soft wet body in my uninjured arm, and pressing kisses upon her bare neck and shoulders.
"My own dear love!" I whispered. "I must have been mad ever to let you go."
I strained her to me, kissing her again and again, until the little round oilskin cap that she was wearing slipped off her head, and her slender beauty was almost hidden by a rippling torrent of dark brown hair.
At last a faint recollection of our rather precarious position began to intrude itself into my mind.
"I hate to stop kissing you, Christine," I said, "but would you mind helping me load my gun? I don't believe I can manage it with one hand."
She released herself from my embrace, and stood there like some lovely sea Naiad, her breast rising and falling and her lips slightly parted.