In that fleeting instant of action she had thought to shoot him in the arm, which, at that short distance, might reasonably have been achieved.

But the wave of savages leaping forward had changed her shot to the shoulder.
It was a moment when not the slightest chance could be taken.
The instant his throat was released, Sheldon struck out with his fist, and Carin-Jama joined his brother on the ground.

The mutiny was quelled, and five minutes more saw the brothers being carried to the hospital, and the mutineers, marshalled by the gang-bosses, on the way to the fields.
When Sheldon came up on the veranda, he found Joan collapsed on the steamer-chair and in tears.

The sight unnerved him as the row just over could not possibly have done.

A woman in tears was to him an embarrassing situation; and when that woman was Joan Lackland, from whom he had grown to expect anything unexpected, he was really frightened.