Page 106 - Malay sketches

MALAY SKETCHES

hers could save him, and more than as
all, affecting
her woman's nerves, she saw face to face the men
with murder in their faces and the means to accom-
it in their hands.
plish
The motive which kept Maamih by Grant's side
and which led her, after receiving the first shot, to
interpose herself between his body and the weapons
of his foes, must have been as high as it was
powerful. Just as there was nothing to fear by
standing aside (for none would have blamed her), so
there was nothing to hope from the forbearance of
Grant's murderers, and that she did not also lose
her life by her devotion to him was the accident of
an ill- directed shot and a well-aimed blow which
sought to sever the woman's arm and reach the neck
it protected the neck of a dead man.
United to the devotion which deemed no sacrifice
for one she
too great loved, was that other sort of
courage which comes of knowledge and deliberate
intention. No one can fail to admire the pluck
which takes no thought of danger, the instinct which
impels a wild beast to charge an enemy and pro-
bably achieve thereby its own destruction. Even
then it can hardly be said that the sensation of fear
has never been and cannot be experienced by the
most formidable and gallant denizens of the forest
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