"By Jove!" he said softly "by Jove, you've got it!" The next instant he was off to rouse his men, and she was on the bottom step giving Am-ma his orders, short, sharp, clear. But when Lance came back again to look out what arms and ammunition he could lay hands on, he found her, in his room, sorting cartridges as if she had done it all her life; and her face turned to him all aglow and splendid. "We shall manage it! Am-ma's gone. He didn't want to, but I told him I'd kill the baby if he didn't. I suppose it was wrong,"--though her woman's tongue sought speech, her woman's hands stuck to their work--"but I couldn't help it. I felt so savage." "You are very brave," he said simply. "Brave!" she echoed. "Why not? People talk as if women always had to try and not be afraid; but we are not all like that. Some of us want to fight. I do, always." She looked it, as, when all was ready, she leant, straining her eyes into the darkness for a hint of Am-ma's return. "He must come," she muttered to herself, "he shall come!" And he did. A bigger wave came sweeping up to the wall as a herald, and then a voice calling for a rope. Half a dozen were ready posted in the men's hands from various points of vantage. They flew outwards; one, from Am-ma's hands inwards to a group holding a lantern on the steps. So, with a silent haul, the pioneers had the raft stopped, and sidling slowly back to mooring against the wall. Then Lance turned to Erda hesitating, divided between his loyalty to Vincent, and to her. "The palace ought to be warned," he said briefly--"if I go there ahead on Am-ma's craft, I could pick you up on your way down. Could you manage?" She gave a look round on the men, eager with the sudden excitement, with the rush, with the very novelty of it all, and laughed--positively laughed. "Manage? Yes! of course I can manage--_havildar!_ see those cartridges are put well back out of the wet--stay! bring down that table, someone, and give it a lash--" Yet, despite this absolute lack of fear, despite the fact that she evidently wanted and desired no more consideration than a man, Lance felt a wild dislike to leaving her there alone, as he stepped on to Am-ma's skin craft, and, edging his way along by the wall, prepared to drift down to the palace balcony. It was mirk dark now, and he had no fear of being seen by the crowd on the bathing steps and the courtyard, though he punted his way with the paddle shaft within a yard or two of the shore; for he wanted to judge how far excitement had spread, how far the crowd was aware of what was coming at dawn.