ran in a cutting, or natural cleft, in the
spine of the ridge; and rocks and bushes, with a few stunted trees, rose
in jumbled terraces on both sides of the car.

Cover was there for a hundred Mut-muts; and for Dick Bellamy one was
more than enough, while he could not see him.

With his heart in his mouth and Ockley's gun in his hand, he sat
waiting.

But Amaryllis, in the false belief that both enemies were behind her,
and well taught in the handling of a car, was not going to begin an
unknown descent at full speed. About half-way across the level, she
slackened the pace, turning her face a little to the left, as if to
speak to the man behind her.

And in that moment, with the words in his mouth to bid her quicken, not
relax the speed, Dick saw the bestial one-eared Malay, erect upon a
boulder, not more than three feet on the off-side distant from the car.

The brute was on the point of leaping down upon them.

The girl saw Dick's revolver go up, turned, and saw its target.

The horrors of the morning, coming to a climax in this shock like a
nightmare's crisis, seemed to stop her heart. With instinctive memory of
her instructor's, "If you're taken bad, miss, throw out your clutch, jam
on your breaks and faint comfortable," she stopped the car and lost
consciousness.

In the same moment Dick fired.

The bullet was too late to stop that gorilla-like spring, and Mut-mut,
with a glitter of steel flashing in one of his outspread palms, launched
himself upon them, landing, like some huge and horrible cat of dreams,
on all fours in the body of the car.

His left ribs were pressed against Dick's knees, his right hand tearing
at and ripping the cloth and leather of the car's side-linings as he
struggled to rise.

What was fastened in that right hand Dick had seen, and with Ockley's
last bullet he blew out Mut-mut's brains.

Before even freeing himself from the weight of the corpse, he felt for
its hip-pocket, and pushed what he found into his own belt.

Then, cursing himself for having finished the brandy, he searched the
locker under the cushion of the seat and found, amongst a confusion of
odds and ends, a sealed bottle of whisky and a corkscrew.

"Robbie Burns, Three Star, All-malt, Pre-War, Liqueur Highland Whisky,"
said the label, gay with pseudo-tartan colours, which, in happier hours,
would have scared him worse than the words.

When he had stretched Amaryllis, still unconscious, in the road, with a
c