Mortified, and with a flush mounting her cheeks at what she considered her mean selfishness, she turned from the meadow and the stretch of ocean southward. She walked across the hilltop. North, east, and west her gaze met an empty blue expanse of water. The hill oscillated and she swayed with it unconscious of the motion. Her attention was held by the glint of a white wing high against the cloudless azure sky to the northward where a frigate bird went seeking a mate.
"Oh, if we but had your wings!" she exclaimed.
"But we haven't," whispered a voice close to her ear. With the words an evil, burning breath struck her cheek and Rowgowskii's two powerful arms encircled her.
At the touch there leaped to life in Emily that furious strength which has been given to women to defend themselves or their offspring from besoiling or destroying hands.
With a shriek she twisted herself in the brute's clasp and hurled him from her, but not before he had succeeded in crushing his hot, sensuous lips against her throat. She struck him in the face with both hands clenched. Landing where Lavelle had smashed him in the boat the morning after the wreck of the Cambodia, the blows drew blood and swept him from his feet. He went over backward and, falling, carried with him the boat mast which was stepped in the center of the hilltop for a signal staff.
Sending a piercing shriek toward the meadow, Emily ran toward the southern slope. Rowgowskii staggered up in her path with outstretched arms as if to stop her. He hesitated and stepped aside. The unaccountable action arrested Emily.
"Go on yelling!" he said wrathfully. "There is nobody to hear. We are alone—you and I."
A sight of the meadow confirmed his words. Lavelle and Chang were not there.
The Russian laughed as she faced him helplessly and incredulously, her strength, for the moment, gone from her. She had no distinct thought. The capacity of thinking and feeling seemed to have never been.
"They went like that," the brute went on with a snap of his fingers. "Just as we are going to go—in a—in a very little while." A lingering quaver went through the hill. He started cravenly. "Feel that, eh? The end is very near."