“You devil!” he gasped. “Wake her or you shall go with her!” and he lifted the knife.
Then Jacob gave in. Shaking off his assailant he stepped to Benita, and while her father stood behind him with the lifted blade, began to make strange upward passes over her, and to mutter words of command. For a long while they took no effect; indeed, both of them were almost sure that she was gone. Despair gripped her father, and Meyer worked at his black art so furiously that the sweat burst out upon his forehead and fell in great drops to the floor.
Oh, at last, at last she stirred! Her head lifted itself a little, her breast heaved.
“Lord in Heaven, I have saved her!” muttered Jacob in German, and worked on.
Now the eyes of Benita opened, and now she stood up and sighed. But she said nothing; only like a person walking in her sleep, she began to move towards the entrance of the cave, her father going before her with the lamp. On she went, and out of it straight to her tent, where instantly she cast herself upon her bed and sank into deep slumber. It was as though the power of the drug-induced oblivion, which for a while was over-mastered by that other stronger power invoked by Jacob, had reasserted itself.
Meyer watched her for awhile; then said to Mr. Clifford:
“Don’t be afraid and don’t attempt to disturb her. She will wake naturally in the morning.”
“I hope so for both our sakes,” he answered, glaring at him, “for if not, you or I, or the two of us, will never see another.”
Meyer took no notice of his threats; indeed the man seemed so exhausted that he could scarcely stand.
“I am done,” he said. “Now, as she is safe, I don’t care what happens to me. I must rest,” and he staggered from the tent, like a drunken man.
Outside, at the place where they ate, Mr. Clifford heard him gulping down raw gin from the bottle. Then he heard no more.
All the rest of the night, and for some hours of the early morning, did her father watch by the bed of Benita, although, lightly clad as he was, the cold of dawn struck to his bones. At length, when the sun was well up, she rose in her bed, and her eyes opened.
“What are you doing here, father?” she said.
“I have come to see where you were, dear. You are generally out by now.”
“I suppose that I must have overslept myself then,” she replied wearily. “But it does not seem to have refreshed me much, and my head aches. Oh! I remember,” she added with a start. “I have had such a horrid dream.”
“What about?” he asked as carelessly as he could.
“I can’t recall it quite, but it had to do with Mr. Meyer,” and she shivered. “It seemed as though I had passed into his power, as though he had taken possession of me, body and soul, and forced me to tell him all the secret things.”
“What secret things, Benita?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know now, but we went away among dead people, and I told him there. Oh! father, I am afraid of that man—terribly afraid! Protect me from him,” and she began to cry a little.
“Of course I will protect you, dear. Something has upset your nerves. Come, dress yourself and you’ll soon forget it all. I’ll light the fire.”
A quarter of an hour later Benita joined him, looking pale and shaken, but otherwise much as usual. She was ravenously hungry, and ate of the biscuits and dried meat with eagerness.
“The coffee tastes quite different from that which I drank last night,” she said. “I think there must have been something in it which gave me those bad dreams. Where is Mr. Meyer? Oh, I know!” and again she put her hand to her head. “He is still asleep by the wall.”
“Who told you that?”
“I can’t say, but it is so. He will not come here till one o’clock. There, I feel much better now. What shall we do, father?”