The Complete Stories by Evelyn Waugh

watching ... silver dawn breaking in the little room where Prunella's bed stood, the coverlet turned down as she had left it on the fatal afternoon ..." He described the ascent into the hills—"... luxuriant tropical vegetation giving place to barren scrub and bare rock ..." He described how the bandits' messenger blindfolded him and how he rode, swaying on his camel through darkness, into the unknown. Then, after what seemed an eternity, the halt; the bandage removed from his eyes ... the bandits' camp. "... twenty pairs of remorseless eastern eyes glinting behind ugly-looking rifles ..." here he took the paper from his machine and made a correction; the bandits' lair was to be in a cave "... littered with bone and skins." ... Joab, the bandit chief, squatting in barbaric splendour, a jewelled sword across his knees. Then the climax of the story; Prunella bound. For some time he toyed with the idea of stripping her, and began to hammer out a vivid word-picture of her girlish frame shrinking in the shadows, Andromeda-like. But caution restrained him and he contented himself with "... her lovely, slim body marked by the hempen ropes that cut into her young limbs ..." The concluding paragraphs related how despair suddenly melted to hope in her eyes as he stepped forward, handing over the ransom to the bandit chief and "in the name of the Daily Excess and the People of Great Britain restored her to her heritage of freedom."
      It was late before he had finished, but he retired to bed with a sense of high accomplishment, and next morning deposited his manuscript with the Eastern Exchange Telegraph Company before setting out with Mr. Youkoumian for the hills.
      The journey was in all respects totally unlike his narrative. They started, after a comfortable breakfast, surrounded by the well wishes of most of the British and many of the French colony, and instead of riding on camels they drove in Mr. Kentish's baby Austin. Nor did they even reach Joab's lair. They had not gone more than ten miles before a girl appeared walking alone on the track towards them. She was not very tidy, particularly about the hair, but, apart from this, showed every sign of robust well-being.
      "Miss Brooks, I presume," said the journalist, unconsciously following a famous precedent. "But where are the bandits?"
      Prunella looked inquiringly towards Mr. Youkoumian who, a few steps in the rear, was shaking his head with vigour. "This British newspaper writing gentleman," he explained, "e know all same Matodi gentlemen. E got the thousand pounds for Joab."
      "Well, he'd better take care," said Miss Brooks, "the bandits are all round you. Oh you wouldn't see them, of course, but I don't mind betting that there are fifty rifles covering us at this moment from behind the boulders and bush and so on." She waved a bare, suntanned arm expansively towards the innocent-looking landscape. "I hope you've brought the money in gold."
      "It's all here, in the back of the car, Miss Brooks."
      "Splendid. Well, I'm afraid Joab won't allow you into his lair, so you and I will wait here, and Youkoumian shall drive into the hills and deliver it."
      "But listen, Miss Brooks, my paper has put a lot of money into this story. I got to see that lair."
      "I'll tell you all about it," said Prunella, and she did.
      "There were three huts," she began, her eyes downcast, her hands folded, her voice precise and gentle as though she were repeating a lesson, "the smallest and the darkest was used as my dungeon."
      The journalist shifted uncomfortably. "Huts," he said. "I had formed the impression that they were caves."
      "So they were," said Prunella. "Hut is a local word for cave. Two lions were chained beside me night and day. Their eyes glared and I felt their foetid breath. The chains were of a length so that if I lay perfectly still I was out of their reach. If I had moved hand or foot ..." She broke off with a little shudder ...
      By the time