Out of this pleasantry brewed a change. The Spaniard stared from face to face for several seconds. What came over him cannot be told—a break in his fine control; a sudden realization that he was whipped; a resurgence of all the shattered strategies in his brain, many of which certain others of the party did not yet understand; his doubt of Framtree, or his inability to reach the weapon,—the exact point which goaded him to black disorder was never known, but the fury of it concentrated upon the Glow-worm. Her mortal fear attracted it.
The look he turned upon her was demoniacal, harrowing as a dream of hell. All else stopped—words, thoughts, even hearts. Miss Mallory craned down to see. The Sorenson woman panted as one dying of thirst. The Señora shrank back. Her face seemed dim, fallen, but she could not lose his eyes. Rey was speaking, leaning forward in his chair, and heaping words upon her like clods upon a corpse:
"… But to-night, things were spoken which could only have come to them—through you! Celestino Rey has been outgeneraled by a clever American girl, but he has also been betrayed by a South American cat—the tortoise-shell of a bagnio-litter——"
Both white men commanded him to stop. The Spaniard turned a glance from Framtree to Bedient…. The woman at the wheel, straining downward, saw the Glow-worm rise with an appalling shudder, as the eyes of her lord left her; saw her body huddle forward toward him, her hands fumbling in her hair.
"My dear Bedient," the Spaniard was saying, "I regret this domestic scene. You must excuse a man who has so recently discovered his Glow-worm to be a scorpion——"
The crouching figure of the woman—in the rage she had prayed for, and as she had prayed for it, with his eyes turned away—hurled forward as one diving into the sea. The flying body seemed huge in the little cabin. The concentration of her weight struck him in the throat. His head whipped back like a flaunted arm. The chair had been screwed to the floor, but the weight of impact ripped the fastenings out of the heavy planking. Backward Rey was borne, beneath a stabbing creature whose cries were as some bestial mystery of the dark.
It was Framtree who tore her loose, and tightened upon her wrist until the fingers opened and the little knife—concealed how long in her hair?—dropped like a feather to the carpet. Swiftly it had let out the life of the Spaniard…. Bedient opened the galley-door at a gesture from the woman. The Chinese came forth.
"It was I—your mistress, Boy—who killed the Señor. You may look. Then fix him quickly, so he will sink. I want him to sink!" she panted.
Bedient waited for Framtree to look up. The eyes of the two men met.
"The first and last chance of war in Equatoria is eliminated," Bedient said.