They'll kill them.'
'They've probably killed them already.'
'Oh, how can you be so callous!
If there's a chance of saving them it's your duty to try.'
'It's my duty to act like a reasonable human being.
I'm not going to risk my life and my policemen's for the sake of a native woman and her half-caste brats.
What sort of a damned fool do you take me for?'
'They'll say you were afraid.'
'Who?'
'Everyone in the colony.'
He smiled disdainfully.
'If you only knew what a complete contempt I have for the opinion of everyone in the colony.'
She gave him a long searching look.
She had been married to him for eight years and she knew every expression of his face and every thought in his mind.
She stared into his blue eyes as if they were open windows.
She suddenly went quite pale. She dropped his hand and turned away.
Without another word she went back on to the veranda.
Her ugly little monkey face was a mask of horror.
Alban went to his office, wrote a brief account of the facts, and in a few minutes the motor launch was pounding down the river.
The next two days were endless.
Escaped natives brought them news of happenings on the estate.
But from their excited and terrified stories it was impossible to get an exact impression of the truth.
There had been a good deal of bloodshed.
The head overseer had been killed.
They brought wild tales of cruelty and outrage.
Anne could hear nothing of Prynne's woman and the two children.
She shuddered when she thought of what might have been their fate.
Alban collected as many natives as he could.
They were armed with spears and swords.
He commandeered boats.
The situation was serious, but he kept his head.
He felt that he had done all that was possible and nothing remained but for him to carry on normally.
He did his official work.
He played the piano a great deal.
He rode with Anne in the early morning.
He appeared to have forgotten that they had had the first serious difference of opinion in the whole of their married life.
He took it that Anne had accepted the wisdom of his decision.
He was as amusing, cordial and gay with her as he had always been. When he spoke of the rioters it was with grim irony: when the time came to settle matters a good many of them would wish they had never been born.
'What'll happen to them?' asked Anne.
'Oh, they'll hang.'
He gave a shrug of distaste.
'I hate having to be present at executions. It always makes me feel rather sick.'
He was very sympathetic to Oakley, whom they had put to bed and whom Anne was nursing.
Perhaps he was sorry that in the exasperation of the moment he had spoken to him offensively, and he went out of his way to be nice to him.
Then on the afternoon of the third day, when they were drinking their coffee after luncheon, Alban's quick ears caught the sound of a motor boat approaching.
At the same moment a policeman ran up to say that the government launch was sighted.
'At last,' cried Alban.
He bolted out of the house.
Anne raised one of the jalousies and looked out at the river.
Now the sound was quite loud and in a moment she saw the boat come round the bend.