aman
he sent sprawling, leaving him huddled and motionless against the
orange-covered divan. The second, stunned by a blow of the tea-tray
across the eyes, could offer no resistance when Blake's smashing right
dealt its blow, the metal gun butt falling like a trip hammer on the
shaved and polished skull.

As the white man swung about he saw the third Chinaman with his hand on
the woman's throat, holding her flat against the wall, placing her
there as a butcher might place a fowl on his block ready for the blow
of his carver. Blake stared at the movement, panting for breath,
overcome by that momentary indifference wherein a winded athlete
permits without protest an adversary to gain his momentary advantage.
Then will triumphed over the weakness of the body. But before Blake
could get to the woman's side he saw the Chinaman's loose-sleeved right
hand slowly and deliberately ascend. As it reached the meridian of its
circular upsweep he could see the woman rise on her toes, rise as
though with some quick effort, yet some effort which Blake could not
understand.

At the same moment that she did so a look of pained expostulation crept
into the staring slant eyes on a level with her own. The yellow jaw
gaped, filled with blood, and the poised knife fell at his side,
sticking point down in the flooring. The azure and lemon-yellow that
covered the woman's body flamed into sudden scarlet. It was only as
the figure with the expostulating yellow face sank to the ground,
crumpling up on itself as it fell, that Blake comprehended. That quick
sweep of scarlet, effacing the azure and lemon, had come from the
sudden deluge of blood that burst over the woman's body. She had made
use of the upstroke, Mexican style. Her knife had cut the full length
of the man's abdominal cavity, clean and straight to the breastbone.
He had been ripped up like a herring.

Blake panted and wheezed, not at the sight of the blood, but at the
exertion to which his flabby muscles had been put. His body was moist
with sweat. His asthmatic throat seemed stifling his lungs. A faint
nausea crept through him, a dim ventral revolt at the thought that such
things could take place so easily, and with so little warning.

His breast still heaved and panted and he was still fighting for breath
when he saw the woman stoop and wipe the knife on one of the fallen
Chinaman's sleeves.

"We 've got to get out of here!" she whimpered, as she caught up the
man