Almost before she knew it, he had drawn her to him, and slipped the arm
about her. She looked up swiftly to protest, but the words were never
spoken. They died upon her lips. For even as she opened them to speak
there came an awful sound from the darkness.

It began deep and low, swelling in volume till it filled the building,
reverberating from stone to stone, vibrating along the broken floor--a
growl rising to a furious snarl--the unmistakable voice of an angry
beast.

Olga stood as one petrified, feeling the arm around her tighten to a
grip, but too lost in horror to take any note thereof. Staring widely
into the darkness before them, she saw two points of light, red,
ominous, advancing as it were by swift stealth out of the deep shadow.

At the same moment, Noel by a sudden, wholly unexpected movement thrust
her behind him.

"Go!" he said. "Go for your life! Get back to Tinker and warn the rest!
I'll keep the brute from following you."

His voice was short and authoritative; it held compulsion. In that
moment of emergency he was a boy no longer, but a man, cool and strong
and undismayed--a man to command obedience.

"Go quickly!" he said. "Remember it's up to you to warn them. This other
is my job. Good-bye!"

He spoke without turning his head; yet the very brevity of his speech
seemed to give her strength. Mechanically, she moved to obey.

Later she never remembered passing out of that place of horror. She
went, hardly knowing what she did. The sudden smiting of the sunshine
between the cypress boughs was the first she knew of having left the
temple behind her. As one stricken blind, she moved, too stunned for
panic.

And then--how it happened she was utterly unable to realize--as if he
had dropped from the sky a man stood suddenly in her path.

He wore a pith helmet dragged forward over his eyes, and she was too
dazzled by the sun to see his face. But there was something--something
in his gait, his figure, his attitude--that sent a wild thrill through
her, waking her to vivid, pulsing life. With an incoherent cry she
clutched him by the arm.

"The tiger!" she gasped. "The tiger!"

"Where?" he said.

She pointed back over her shoulder, her eyes dilated, anguished. "In the
temple,--and Noel is there! He will be killed!"

In a single movement he had freed his arm and was gone. She heard his
feet racing over the stones, and she turned up her face to the blinding
sunshine and frantically prayed....