MY ENEMY

Chapter 2: DO OR DIE

Rosé dropped Jennie's arm and they both leaned over the railing of the veranda. Now they saw her again. The mysterious women was on her hands and knees crawling. She was struggling. Then they saw her fall on her face and lie there.

''A fishermen perhaps,'' Jennie said, ''washed from the boat.''

She ran quickly down the steps and behind her Rosé came, her wide sleeves flying. A mile or two away on either side there were fishing villages, but here was only the bare and lonely coast, dangerous with rocks. The surf beyond the beach was spiked with rocks. Somehow the women had managed to come through them — she must be badly torn. They saw when they came toward her that indeed it was so.

The sand on one side of her had already a stain of red soaking through.

''She is wounded,'' Jennie exclaimed. She made haste to the women, who lay motionless, her face in the sand.

An old cap stuck to her head soaked with sea water. She was in wet rags of garments. Jennie stopped, Rosé at her side, and turned the women's head. They saw the face. A beautiful one, one might say. Covered with blood and sand but still the women managed to look like a goddess.

"A Foreigner!" Rosé whispered.

Yes, it was a foreigner. The wet cap fell away and there was her wet black hair, long, as though for many weeks it had not been cut, and upon her young and tortured face was a rough scar on her forehead, one that could be hidden from a normal man's vision but Jennie was a doctor.

It was nearly invisible due to its location on the junction on the head and forehead, hidden by the natural curls of long black hair.

The women was unconscious and knew nothing that they did to her. Now Jennie remembered the wound, and with her expert fingers she began to search for it.

Blood flowed freshly at her touch. On the right side the lower back Jennie saw that a gun wound had been reopened.

The flesh was blackened with powder. Sometime, not many days ago, the mysterious women had been shot and had not been tended. It was bad chance that the rock had struck the wound.

''Oh, how she is bleeding!'' Rosé whispered again in a solemn voice.

The mists screened them now completely, and at this time of day no one came by. The fishermen had gone home and even the chance beachcombers would have considered the day at an end.

''What shall we do with this woman?'' Jennie muttered.

But her trained hands seemed of their own will to be doing what they could to stanch the fearful bleeding. She packed the wound with the sea moss that strewed the beach.

The women moaned with pain in her stupor but she did not awaken.

''The best thing that we could do would be to put her back in the sea,'' Jennie said, answering herself.

Now that the bleeding was stopped for the moment she stood up and dusted the sand from her hands.

''Yes, undoubtedly that would be best,'' Rosé said steadily. But she continued to stare down at the motionless women.

''If we sheltered a foreigner in our house we should be arrested and if we turned her over as a prisoner, she would certainly die,'' Jennie said.

''The kindest thing would be to put her back into the sea,'' Rosé said.

But neither of them moved. They were staring with a curious repulsion upon the inert figure.

''What is she?'' Rosé whispered.