But even as the gorilla wavered staggeringly under the blow, a soft something slipped about Barlow's throat and tightened like the coils of a python. And behind something was pressing him to his death. The other Bagree springing to the assistance of Hunsa had looped his roomal about the Sahib's throat with the art of a thug.
Barlow's senses were going; his brain swam; in his fancy he had been shot from a cliff and was hurtling through space in which there was no air—his lungs had closed; in his brain a hammer was beating him into unconsciousness.
Then suddenly the pressure on his throat ceased, it fell away; the air rushed to the parched lungs. With a wrench his brain cleared, and he went down; but now with power in his arms, the arms that still clung about the dazed Hunsa, and he was on top.
Scarce aware of the action, out of a fighting instinct, he dragged from its holster his heavy pistol, and beat with its butt the ugly head beneath, beat it till it was still. Then he staggered to his feet and looked wonderingly at the form of the Bagree behind who lay sprawled on the road, a great red splash across the white jacket on his breast.
In the Gulab's hand was still clutched the dagger she had drawn from her girdle and driven home to save the sahib who had sat like a god in her heart. With the other hand she held out from contact with her limbs the muslin sari that was crimsoned where the blood of the Bagree had fountained when she drew forth her knife.
Barlow darted forward as Bootea reeled and caught her with an arm. Close, the face, fair as that of a memsahib in the pallor of fright and the paling moonlight, sweet, of finer mould, more spiritual than the Mona Lisa's, puritanically simple, the mass of black hair drawn straight back from the low broad brow—for the rich turban had fallen in her fight for freedom—woke memory in the sahib; and as the blood ebbed back through the girl's veins, the pale cheeks flushed with rose, her eyelids quivered and drew back their shutters from eyes that were like those of an antelope.
"You—you, Gulab, the giver of the red rose, the singer of the love song!" Barlow gasped.
"Yes, Captain Sahib, you who are like a god—" Bootea checked, her head drooped.
But Barlow putting his fingers under her chin and gently lifting the face asked, "And what—what?"
"You came like one in a dream. Also, Sahib, I am but one who danced before you and you have saved me."