The Second Class Passenger | Page 6

smiling, and lowered herself.
He followed. She was crouching in the shadow of the wall, and drew
him down beside her. Somebody had ceased to sleep in the tent, and
was gabbling drowsily, in a monotonous sing-song.
"If they see us," she whispered to him, "they will think you have come
here after the women."
"But we could say----" he began.
"There will be nothing to say," she interrupted. "Hush! There he
comes."
Out of the tent crawled a man, lean and black and bearded, with a sheet
wrapped around him. He stood up and looked around, yawning. The
woman nestled closer to Dawson, who gripped instinctively on the
bronze image. The man walked to the parapet on their left and looked
over, and then walked back to the tent and stood irresolutely, muttering
to himself. Squatted under the wall, Dawson found room amid the race
of his disordered thoughts to wonder that he did not instantly see them.
He was coming towards them, and Dawson felt the bare shoulder that
pressed against his arm shrug slightly. The man was ten paces away,
walking right on to them, and looking to the sky, when, with throbbing
temples and tense lips, Dawson rose, ran at him, and gripped him. He
had the throat in the crutch of his right hand, and strangled the man's
yell as it was conceived. They went down together, writhing and
clutching, Dawson uppermost, the man under him scratching and
slapping at him with open hands. He drew up a knee and found a lean
chest under it, drove it in, and choked his man to silence and
unconsciousness.

"Take this, take this," urged the woman, bending beside him. She
pressed her slender-bladed knife on him. "Just a prick, and he is quite
safe!"
Dawson rose. "No," he said. "He's still enough now. No need to kill
him." He looked at the body and from it to the woman. "Didn't I get
him to rights?" he asked exultantly.
She raised her face to his.
"It was splendid," she said. "With only the bare hands to take an armed
man----"
"Armed!" repeated Dawson.
"Surely," she answered. "That, at least, is always sure. See," she pulled
the man's sheet wide. Girt into a loin-cloth below was an ugly, broad
blade. "Yes, it was magnificent. You are a man, my friend."
"And you," he said, thrilled by her adulation and, the proximity of her
bare, gleaming bosom, "are a woman."
"Then----" she began spiritedly; but in a heat of cordial impulse he took
her to him and kissed her hotly on the lips.
"I was wondering when it would come," she said slowly, as he released
her. "When you spoke to the German about the bad word, I began to
wonder. I knew it would come. Kiss me again, my friend, and we will
go on."
"Are we getting towards the landing-stage?" he asked her, as the next
roof was crossed. "I mustn't miss my boat, you know."
"Oh, that!" she answered. "You want to go back?"
"Well, of course," he replied, in some surprise. "That's what I was
trying to do when I knocked at your door. I've missed my dinner as it
is."

"Missed your dinner!" she repeated, with a bubble of mirth. "Ye-es;
you have lost that, but,"--she came to him and laid a hand on his
shoulder, speaking softly--"but you have seen me. Is it nothing, friend,
that you have saved me?"
He had stopped, and she was looking up to him, half-smiling, half-
entreating, wholly alluring. He looked down into her dark face, with a
sudden quickening about the heart.
"And all this fighting," she continued, as though he were to be
convinced of something. "You conquer men as though you were bred
on the roofs of Mozambique. You fight like--like a hero. It is a rush, a
blow, a tumble, and you have them lying at your feet. And when you
remember all this, will you not be glad, friend--will you not be glad
that it was for me?"
He nodded, clearing his throat huskily. Her hand on his shoulder was a
thing to charm him to fire.
"I'd fight--I'd fight for you," he replied uneasily, "as long as--as long as
there was any one to fight."
He was feeling his way in speech, as best he could, past
conventionalities. There had dawned on him, duskily and half-seen, the
unfitness of little proprieties and verbose frills while he went to war
across the roofs with this woman of passion.
"You would," she said fervently, with half-closed eyes. "I know you
would."
She dropped her hand, and stood beside him in silence. There was a
long pause. He guessed she was waiting for the next move from him,
and he nerved himself to be adequate to her