Page:The Country-House Party.djvu/39

Rh have a chance. They will save me, being a woman.'

'Do not dare,' he said, and set his teeth. 'I would only spring after you, and die.'

'Why did you not go with the water?' she wailed. 'You would have been helped by the flow.'

'The river runs into the heart of a town. We should have been lost indeed then. It laps the very walls of the house I have made notorious. Better to die here.' He rested his hands on his oars, and said gently to her: 'Come, come to me, for it is useless to struggle longer. Let us go down into the green waters; and since we go together, death is best of all.'

She looked into the water and shuddered.

'It is so strange,' she said. 'Look! like a great glittering serpent, full of weird colours, waiting to crush us.'

He looked the way her fingers pointed, and eagerly dipped his hand into the flow.

'Oil!' he muttered; 'oil!' Then lifted his voice into a wild laugh. She gazed upon him, wondering. Behind came an answering shout from their pursuers, savage and eager for blood.