With the temptation came a weighty sense of responsibility. Unless something were done soon, it would be too late. No one could tell when there might be a break which would Hood the whole system. On the other hand, if Miguel was up to some new trick, it might ruin the last hope. He was still urging, but she scarcely heard him. She had no intention of being driven to a hurried decision. She must think it out.
The procrastination sent Miguel almost frenzied. He cursed, argued, and threatened, but Margaret remained adamant; she must have time.
She walked out with her four guards, leaving him trembling in a fury of exasperation.
CHAPTER IV
Little of Margaret's next 'night' was spent in sleep. Mostly she lay restless, turning the problem round and round to examine each facet. Her mind felt weighted down with liability; it could move only sluggishly instead of jumping.
The Sun Bird she had now come to regard as the essential fulcrum of escape; to waste it would be to lose everything. Had the escaper been anyone but Miguel, she would not have hesitated to go with him—or even to let him go alone. But that did not help. Miguel was Miguel, and no amount of wishing would change him. Why, out of all the hundreds of men in the prison caves, must it be Miguel who had escaped? The answer was obvious. If it had not been Miguel, it would have been someone like him. The essence of his ability to get so far lay in that very fact. Only someone utterly unprincipled and ruthless could have made that bargain with the pygmies.
And if he had been ruthless once, why not again? He was already angry with her. Why should he keep his part of the bargain when there was nothing to hold him to it? It would be only too easy for him once they had started to push her overboard and let her drown.
Margaret turned uneasily. Yes, that would be child's play. Just the sort of satisfactorily complete ending to the affair which would please a mind like Miguel's. She could see just how he would look at it: This woman might tell the authorities of him either by accident, or by citing him as a witness to the truth of her story. Why take chances?
Settle her out of hand, and stop any possibility of trouble.
And then ...? Not only would she have lost her life, but the Sun Bird would be gone too....
Wasn't there some way of getting a hold on Miguel to force him to keep the bargain?
Money? A good round sum to be paid over when she should reach safety.... But she had very little money. Mark had plenty, she knew, but that was not much good. For one thing he might not fulfil a promise made by her to Miguel, and, for another, the chances of his rescue alive were problematical. So much so that they could scarcely be expected to restrain Miguel if he thought himself in jeopardy. No, money would not serve. What would?
Her thoughts swept round in overlapping circles. They multiplied; their pattern grew more intricate, more mazy, but they led nowhere. Not in a single place did the line of argument shoot off to form a plan. She grew wearied of the infinite revolutions, and dragged herself back to the single fixed point of the pattern. It all hinged on one question.
Was she, or was she not justified in risking the Sun Bird with such a man as Miguel?
Put like that, the answer was obvious. She was not.
And on that decision she went to sleep.
She told Garm about Miguel the next 'day'. It was not an agreeable task. Her betrayal of him seemed from some points of view to drag her down to his own level. But she made herself do it. If the safety of the Sun Bird was as important as she had assumed, it must be assured at all costs. Miguel might succeed in finding it without her help; he might be searching for it even now. And he must be stopped. Suppressing any reference to the Sun Bird, she set herself to blacken, if possible, Miguel's character.
Garm listened willingly. His original dislike of Miguel, founded not on the other's underhand methods so much as on pure prejudice, made him a good subject. He was not vastly surprised to hear of the projected escape; that was only to be expected, and not very worrying—in fact the sooner it occurred, the sooner this Miguel business would be settled. When he was told, however, that it was proposed that Margaret should accompany the flight, his indignation rose. To attempt one's own freedom was natural, but to suggest such a course to the hand-maiden of a goddess was vile.
And that was not all. With rising anger he listened to a well-coloured account of Miguel's attentions and intentions towards her. By the end of it Margaret had succeeded in rousing him to a remarkable state of fury. Garm himself set little prize on celibacy, but he was convinced that the goddess insisted upon virginity in her chief attendant. But there was worse to follow. It appeared that this scum, this filth, this Miguel had profaned holiness, had committed such coarse sacrilege as revolted the mind, had outraged the spirit of the goddess at her very shrine, had, in fact, spat in the cat's eye.
Garm swept from the cave in a passion, leaving Margaret a little stunned by her success. That afterthought had done more than all the rest. She looked across at Bast, who blinked solemnly back at her.
'It's lucky you can't let me down,' she told her. 'That's certainly finished Miguel, and you seemed rather fond of him. Scratched your ears nicely, didn't he?'
She was suddenly struck by a spasm of remorse. Had she pitched it too strong? Even though she hated him, she had no wish for his death upon her conscience. Garm had looked too angry to stop at mere detention, but she hoped he would. After all, Miguel had wanted freedom no less than the rest. His weapons had been base, but he had no others. One should not blame him too much....
Resolutely she put the subject away. She had considered it her duty, and whatever happened now was outside her control.
She took one of the white, eyeless fish from a bowl and began to cut it up with a sharp stone for Bast. The cat still seemed to thrive; that was a blessing. She put the fragments into a smaller bowl, and pushed it across the floor. It was odd the extent to which events had depended upon that bundle of fur.
But for it, she would have been in the prison caves. It was because she was here and able to show him the way to the Sun Bird that Miguel had made his bargain—for she was sure now that he had intended from the beginning to get hold of it. Because of that bargain a war was now going on in the prison caves. Her thoughts drifted to Mark. Would he be strong enough yet to fight? What sort of fighting could it be? No firearms, no swords even. A hand to hand tussle, she supposed. The pygmies had been greatly thinned by the numbers drafted away. Since the special prayers to Bast, which she now recognised as the send-off of the expeditionary force, the attenders at the temple meetings had been mostly women.
And the prisoners had beaten off the first attack. Garm had told her that with mingled sorrow and surprise. His pride of race had been hurt. On the purely practical grounds of size it was only to be expected that one of the prisoners should be a match for two pygmies, but when a mere hundred and fifty or so were able to defy well over a thousand pygmies, he felt humiliated. He understood it to be due to guile.
'We,' he explained, 'are honest fighters. We fight with pride in our skill and our strength, but these prisoners....' He shook his head. 'They do not know how to fight. They work with cunning and hidden subtleties, instead of fighting like men with sling and knife. It degrades warfare....
'Of course'—he became magnanimous—'they can scarcely be blamed. They have not our standards. Coming, as they do, from a world which has forsaken the gods so that devils may stalk in spurious honour, it is not surprising that they have learned meannesses of spirit, unworthy stratagems which we despise.'