At any rate, while in the act of turning our heads, two of the three Arabs, who had previously left the room, threw nooses over them and bound our arms to our sides with the jiffy-swiftness only sailors know.

The third man put the finishing touches, and presently adjusted gags with a neatness and solicitude worthy of the Inquisition.
"Throw them!" she ordered, and in a second our heels were struck from under us and I was half stunned by the impact of my head against the solid floor (for all the floors of that great place were built to resist eternity).
"Now!" she said.

"Show them knives!" We were shown forthwith the ugliest, most suggestive weapons I have ever seen--long sliver-thin blades sharper than razors.

The Arabs knelt on our chests (their knees were harder and more merciless than wooden clubs) and laid the blades, edge-upward, on the skin of our throats.
"Let them feel!" she ordered.
I felt a sharp cut, and the warm blood trickled down over my jugular to the floor.

I knew it was only a skin-cut, but did not pretend to myself I was enjoying the ordeal.
"Now!" she said.
The Arabs stepped away and she came and stood between us, looking down at one and then the other.
"There isn't a place in Africa," she said, "that you can hide in where the Sultan's men can't find you! There isn't a British officer in Africa who would believe you if you told what has happened in this room tonight! Yet Lord Montdidier will believe you--he knows you presumably, and certainly he knows me! So tell Lord Montdidier exactly what has happened! Assure him with my compliments that his throat and yours shall be cut as surely as you dare set out after that ivory without signing my agreement first.