“Ready?”

“Ready.”

Her right hand was hovering. I let go, trying to keep my balance without a handhold momentarily, and grabbed fast again, over her hand and the rock, as soon as she’d taken a hold. I said: “Same deal, the other hand. And then, for just a few seconds, you’re on your own. Ready?”

“Ready.”

I let go and she grabbed hard, and I put all my weight on that belt and tested it for a moment. I could feel it stretching a trifle, which was all to the good; if it was going to snap, this was the moment.

I said: “Hold tight, I’m going past you. Just clutch on with both hands for all you’re worth, it’s not too difficult. And, whatever you do, don’t look down.”

“My eyes are shut tight.”

“Good.”

She said, her voice horrified: “Did you say...past me?”

“Yes, that’s what I said. There’s a bit of ironwork up there, all that’s left of an old bridge across here, or a handrail or something. I’m hooked onto it now. Hold tight.”

I swung up and over her, and heaved my body onto the broad green swathe above us. Before I even rolled over I had hold of her wrists with my left hand, and only just in time too. A hundred pounds or a thousand, she couldn’t hold it, and she lost her grip; but I had her arms firmly and let her dangle there just for one minute to collect her wits. I said: “Don’t worry, I’ve got you. Now.”

I pulled hard and swung her bodily up, clear off the overhang, and plonked her down beside me. We lay side by side for a moment, panting, and she looked at me with something like amazement and said:

“I’d never have believed it possible. Any more of the same?”

I whispered: “I think not. It should be easy going now.”

“Thank God.”

We were on a broad plateau now, not much more than twenty or thirty feet below the top of the cliff. It was sheer and steep and quite unscalable above us, and I knew that from up there, there wasn’t likely to be any danger. Below, the ground sloped quite gently for a few yards, and then dropped down abruptly for the remaining seventy or eighty feet to the sea.

I whispered: “I think not. It should be easy going bushes.”

Together, we crawled on, feeling every inch of the way for loose rocks that could betray our presence.

Far down below there, below and to my left, I could see Estrilla. She was running swiftly along the sand in the lea of the cliff, climbing quickly over the jagged, broken rocks, splashing in and out of the surf and not stopping. And there was something wrong; she’d gone much further than I would have expected.

I whispered to Astrid: “Where, precisely, was the Colonel when he fell?”

She pointed: “That pinnacle there.”

“Then she’s passed the point where he would have landed.”

Puzzled, Astrid watched for a moment. Then: “She has, too. Why?”

I said: “She’s going for her gun. And that means she’s seen something we haven’t. She’s seen Van Reck, and she’s going for the purse she left in the rocks. Over there, wasn’t it?” I pointed.

“Yes, there by the little hut.”

“God damn her eyes, she’s committing suicide.”

“She’s...she’s what?”

I said: “Van Reck’s out there searching for me, without a doubt. And, without a doubt, he’s seen her purse lying among the rocks there with a gun in it. And it’s equally certain that he’ll know she’ll come back for it, sooner or later. Come on!”

I jumped up and ran, and heard her following me, falling behind and trying to catch her breath. It wasn’t far, no more than a hundred yards, to bring us directly above the broken-down shack, and I covered it over the rough ground in a little under ten seconds. I threw myself flat on my face with my head close to the edge and looked over. Estrilla was running more or less below me now, getting close to the high-piled rocks where the two girls had sheltered. I saw her climb quickly up over them and down, out of my sight, on the other side.

I had a dreadful foreboding. I felt for a moment the keen need for a gun, the need that drives a man who gets into as much trouble as I sometimes do to carry one with him always, and then do all the wrong things with it. It’s one thing to be able to protect yourself without one, but it’s something else again to stand helplessly by and see someone you like being murdered.

I groped around for the oldest weapon in history—for something to throw. My fingers closed on a stone, a smooth round stone the size of a grapefruit. It weighed about ten pounds, I judged, and though I’d have preferred something a little heavier, this was not the time to be meticulous. It was the kind of stone you can crack open with a sharp tap from a sledgehammer, to produce pretty pictures of the strata inside for kids. I moved over quietly a distance of twenty feet or so to see if I could relocate her; and I could. I saw her bend double and pick up something from among the rocks, a black silk purse with beads on it that caught the light brightly, just the kind of thing to give your position away if you wanted someone to take a shot at you.

I realized that she was up to exactly that; she’d seen him, then, seen him and ignored him, running on to make him wonder what she was up to, knowing that he didn’t have to fire until she was almost out of range, if she ever went that far. She’d have been in the sights of his deadly little bow for...how far now? It didn’t matter at all.

What mattered was that she’d seen him. She was shaking that damned purse about in the sunlight, letting the reflected light shine all over the place, just in case he couldn’t see her clearly; she didn’t know him as well as I did!

I moved again, just a few feet, out from under cover, signaling Astrid for absolute silence. I stood up slowly, my age-old weapon in my hand and ready, and I covered every inch of the view.

And there he was.

He was standing well away from the face of his particular piece of cliff, his back towards me, not more than fifty feet away and twenty feet or so below. That put him roughly the same distance from Estrilla; she was below him, and he was below me, both of them at a three-quarter angle to the watcher above. He was holding his bow loosely, watching her as she delved into her bag and came out with the gun. And I knew then that she was absolutely certain about precisely where he was.

It was all so unbelievably casual. At one moment, she was rummaging through her bag, a housewife who’s lost the keys to the station wagon, waving it around in impatience. And then, suddenly, she dropped the bag, swung round, aimed the little gun high at the end of a straight arm, all very professional, with her feet firm and wide apart and her body slightly crouched; and she fired.

Or rather, she pulled the trigger; but nothing happened. I didn’t expect it to.

Either he’d removed the shells already, or more probably (because of the delicate question of the difference in weight), had merely snapped off the firing pin. And now, as she stared in disbelief at the little gun, standing there in her professional stance, a sitting duck, I saw him raise the little bow quite slowly and pull back on the string. He didn’t have to be so slow; he was fast and accurate, and she was only fifty feet away from him, a target so easy as to be practically unsporting.

But he wasn’t thinking of the sport. He wanted her to turn and run, so that he could let her sweat it out for a while till she was sure that she was out of range. And then, then, then he’d use his expertise and revel in it. Out of range? How far did she think that might be? I’d seen how he used the Mongolian draw for maximum strength, a thumb-powered draw that’s necessary with a bow so strong it can’t be pulled back with the fingers. The unofficial record range for a handheld bow has been unbroken, even by modern methods and with modern equipment, ever since 1798, when the Sultan of Turkey sent a shaft for the incredible distance of nine hundred and seventy-two yards—a hundred yards more than the half-mile. And he used the Mongolian draw too.

I didn’t suppose for one moment that Van Reck, with his three-foot steel bow, could come anywhere near that figure; the official record distance, handheld and bare bow, is still under six hundred yards. But that was of no importance. The only thing that mattered now was Estrilla.

She must have realized that her gun had been tampered with. She clicked the trigger again, twice, and then lowered it and just stood there, facing him, standing straight and solid and well in command of herself. I could see the angry, contemptuous look on her face. She knew I was there; but her look did not shift from him.

I saw Van Reck pull further back on the string. I saw him raise the bow the last few inches. But his sadism had betrayed him, he was too late. The moment Estrilla swung round and pointed that useless gun, I was up with my arm pulled back and already throwing that smooth round stone. I was once pretty good at putting the shot—or putting the stone, as it used to be called. Jimmy Fuchs, at Yale, gave me a few pointers in the old days, just before he gave the world a new record of fifty-eight feet, and that’s a sixteen pound shot. I had only ten pounds or so to fool around with, and I didn’t have to worry about form either. I just pulled back my arm and hurled it.

He heard me, Van Reck; he would, of course. But I hadn’t taken the time to shift my weight, or bring in my right knee, or bend my left. I just threw. He’d already swung round and his right arm was going back, the thumb curled round the string in his Mongolian draw. But he was too late, or I’d started too early; the bow was barely in line when the heavy stone hit him like a cannonball in the middle of his chest. I’d aimed at the small of his back when he was facing the other way.

I heard a sort of yell somewhere, a sound that might have been the cry of a gull or perhaps, more likely, the shriek of the Guincho bird that’s supposed to come along these shores once in a while; a strange, unearthly croak that could have been anything under the sun except a man calling cut. But there was no time to find out what it was, or even to let it do more than impinge itself upon the awareness. I was too busy watching Van Reck. The little bow flew out of his hands; and the shaft, at half pressure, made a graceful carve in the air and landed at my feet.

But Van Reck himself...He doubled up and seemed to fly back, leaving the ground completely with all his limbs spread-eagled, and a terrible sound came out of that speechless mouth, half scream and half roar. He sailed through the air a few feet and fell, and his own momentum carried him down the steep slope, rolling over and over towards the water. I saw the leather quiver that was across his shoulder break open, and his shafts were scattering in all directions as he rolled over and among them. He slid a little, and rolled again, and dropping down the last ten feet or so with a crash onto the rocks, where the water lapped at him hungrily.

Estrilla was already running towards him, the useless gun still in her hand, I didn’t wait for Astrid and I was there first, ready for him because this, like Fenrek, was the kind of man who never really died. Like a shark that’s been so long out of the water that it’s dead; unless you take a belaying pin to those razor toothed jaws first, you’d better not put your foot anywhere near them unless you want to lose it. I half expected him to rise up out of the water and go for me, with a knife in his hand, perhaps, or the strangling wire that is the favorite nighttime weapon.

But he didn’t.

I imagined that his neck might easily have been broken, but that didn’t matter very much, really. One of his own steel-pointed shafts was under the armpit, just the point of it entering the flesh at a very acute angle and passing out again the other side, like a skewer in a fold of white chicken meat, twisting the white flesh round and tearing it a little as well.

The red on its tip was a mixture of blood and strychnine. They make the poison out there by boiling the roots of the strychnos tree and straining the pulp through a crab shell. When it is good and thick and ripe and red, it’s ready.