Kitabı oku: «A Veldt Official: A Novel of Circumstance», sayfa 5
Chapter Eight.
Concerning the Chase
“Well, you two Sabbath-breakers!” was Grace Suffield’s laughing greeting to her husband and guest on the following morning, as she joined the two on the stoep, where they were cleaning and oiling a rifle apiece preparatory to the day’s doings. “So you’re not to be persuaded into abandoning your wicked enterprise?”
“It’s the only day a poor hard-worked Civil Servant has the whole of, Mrs Suffield,” answered Roden.
“Oh yes! I daresay. As if you couldn’t have as many days as you chose to ask for. But come in now. Breakfast is ready.”
They entered, and were immediately beset by the glum face and wistful entreaty of the eldest hopeful, begging to be allowed to come too.
“Not to-day, sonny; not to-day,” answered his father decisively. “You can go out any day; you’re not a hard-worked Civil Servant. Besides, we shall hardly get anything; we’re only going just for the sake of the ride. Where’s Mona?” he added. “Late, as usual?”
“Oh yes. We needn’t wait for her.”
Well that they did not, for breakfast was nearly over when she sailed in, bringing with her – surprise; for she was clad in a riding habit.
“Hallo, young woman! What’s the meaning of this? Going to ride into Doppersdorp to church?” sang out Suffield.
“Not to-day, Charlie. I’m going to see you and Mr Musgrave shoot a buck.”
“Eh!” said Suffield, with a blank stare at Roden.
“Oh, you needn’t look so disappointed, or you might have the civility not to show it. I’m going with you, and that’s all about it,” said Mona, with nonchalant decision, beginning upon her tea.
“Well, upon my word! But we are going into the very dev – er – I mean, all sorts of rough places, right up among the krantzes. Who on earth is going to look after such a superfine young party as you?”
“Wait until somebody is asked to. Meanwhile, I flatter myself I’m old enough and ugly enough to look after myself.”
“Father, you said just now you were only going for the sake of the ride,” struck in the disappointed hopeful.
“Um – yes, did I though? So I did, Frank. I say, though. Did you ever hear the saying, that small boys should be seen and not heard? If you’re ready, Musgrave, we’ll go round and see about the horses.” Under which somewhat cowardly expedient Suffield rose to effect a timely retreat. “By the way, what are you going to ride, Miss Independence?” he added, turning on the threshold.
“Oh, I’ve arranged all that,” replied Mona, indifferently.
And she had. When they reached the stable they found the ragged Hottentot groom already placing a side-saddle upon one of the horses, a steady-going sure-footed bay.
Now, Roden Musgrave was a real sportsman; which, for present purposes, may be taken to mean that, whatever might be lovely woman’s place, in his opinion it was not out buck-shooting among more or less dangerous slopes and crags. Nevertheless, when Mona’s glance had rested momentarily upon his face as she made her surprising announcement, he flattered himself that he had done nothing to show his real opinion. Nor had he, actively, but there was not the slightest sign of brightening at the news, such as would have lit up the countenance of, say, Lambert, in like case. And this she, for her part, did not fail to note.
It was a lovely morning as they rode forth along the base of the great sweeping slopes, terraced at intervals with buttresses of cliff. The air was as clear and exhilarating as wine, and the sky one vivid, radiant, azure vault. High overhead a white fleecy cloud or two soared around a craggy peak.
“Isn’t it a day?” cried Mona, half breathlessly, as they pulled up to a walk, after a long canter over the nearly level plain. “Grace thinks we are an out-and-out sinful trio.”
“So we are, Miss Ridsdale,” said Roden. “But you’re the worst. Woman – lovely woman – is nothing if not devout. Now, with Suffield and myself it doesn’t matter. We are the unregenerate and brutal sex.”
“Well it isn’t our fault, anyway,” said Suffield. “We are Church of England, and that persuasion is not represented in Doppersdorp. And, at any rate, it’s better to be doing something rational on Sunday than to sit twirling one’s thumbs and yawning, and smoking too many pipes all day because it is Sunday.”
“Why don’t you agitate for a church, then?” asked Roden.
“Oh, the bishop and the dean are too hard at it, fighting out their battle royal in Grahamstown, to spare time to attend to us. There’s a Methodist meeting-house in Doppersdorp and a Catholic chapel, as well as the Dutch Reformed church, but we are left to slide.”
“Have you been to the Catholic church, Mr Musgrave?” said Mona. “I go there sometimes, though I always have to fight Grace before and after on the subject. But I don’t see why I shouldn’t go. I like it.”
“That surely should be justification enough.”
“Don’t put on that nasty, cynical tone when I want you to talk quite nicely.”
“But I don’t know how.”
“I’m not going to pay you the compliment you’re fishing for. What were we talking about? Oh, I know. Isn’t Father O’Driscoll a dear old man?”
“I suppose so, if that means something in his favour.”
“That is just like you,” said Mona, half angrily. “Why don’t you agree with me cordially instead of in that half-hearted way, especially as you and he have become such friends? They are already saying in Doppersdorp that you will soon turn Catholic.”
“One might ‘turn’ worse. But Doppersdorp, as not infrequently happens, is wide of the mark. When the old man and I make an evening of it our conversation is not of faith, but of works. We talk about fishing.”
“What? Always?”
“Always. Don’t you know that the votary of the fly when, after long abstinence, he runs against another votary of the fly, takes a fresh lease of life. Now, Father O’Driscoll and myself are both such votaries, the only two here. Wherefore, when we get together, we enthuse upon the subject like anything.”
“It’s refreshing to learn that you can enthuse upon any subject,” Mona rejoined.
“Oh, I can. Wait till we get up yonder among the rhybok.”
“This way,” cut in Suffield, striking into a by-track. “We must call in at Stoffel Van Wyk’s. That long berg at the back of his place is first-rate for rhybok.”
“Most we?” expostulated Mona. “But we shall have to drink bad coffee.”
“Well, the berry as there distilled is not first-rate.”
“And try and make conversation with the vrouw?”
“That too.”
“Well, don’t let’s go.”
“Mona, are you in command of this expedition, or am I? The course I prescribe is essential to its success. Hallo! Jump off, Musgrave! There’s a shot!”
They had turned off from the open plain now, and were riding through a narrow poort, or defile, which opened soon into another hill-encircled hollow. The passage was overhung with rugged cliffs, in which ere and there a stray euphorbia or a cactus had found root. Up a well-nigh perpendicular rock-face, sprawling, shambling like a tarantula on a wall, a huge male baboon was making his way. He must have been quite two hundred yards distant, and was looking over his shoulder at his natural enemies, the while straining every muscle to gain the top of the cliff.
Roden’s piece was already at his shoulder. There was a crack, then a dull thud. The baboon relaxed his hold, and with one spasmodic clutch toppled heavily to the earth.
“Good shot!” cried Suffield enthusiastically. “It’s not worth while going to pick him up. I wonder what he’s doing here all alone, though. You don’t often catch an old man baboon napping.”
“Don’t you feel as if you had committed a murder, Mr Musgrave?” said Mona.
“Not especially. On the other hand, I am gratified to find that this old Snider shoots so true. It’s a Government one I borrowed from the store for the occasion.”
“Murder be – um! – somethinged!” said Suffield. “These baboons are the most mischievous schelms out. They have discovered that young lamb is good, the brutes! Sympathy wasted, my dear child.”
But when they reached Stoffel Van Wyk’s farm they found, to Mona’s intense relief, that that typical Boer and all his house were away from home. This they elicited with difficulty between the savage bayings of four or five great ugly bullet-headed dogs, which could hardly be restrained from assailing the new arrivals by the Kaffir servant who gave the information.
“We’ll go on at once, then, Musgrave,” said Suffield. “Stoffel’s a very decent fellow, and won’t mind us shooting on his farm; though, of course, we had to call at the house as a matter of civility.”
The place for which they were bound was a long, flat-topped mountain, whose summit, belted round with a wall of cliff, was only to be gained here and there where the rock had yawned away into a deep gully. It was along the slopes at the base of the rocks that bucks were likely to be put up.
“We’ll leave the horses here with Piet,” said Suffield, “and steal up quietly and look over that ridge of rocks under the krantz. We’ll most likely get a shot.”
The ridge indicated sloped away at right angles from the face of a tall cliff. It was the very perfection of a place for a stalk. Dismounting, they turned over their horses to the “after-rider.”
“Hold hard, Miss Ridsdale. Don’t be in such a hurry,” whispered Roden warningly. “If you chance to dislodge so much as a pebble, the bucks down there’ll hear it, if there are any.”
Mona, who was all eagerness and excitement, took the hint. But a riding habit is not the most adaptable of garments for stalking purposes, and she was conscious of more than one look, half of warning, half of vexation, on the part of her male companions daring the advance.
Lying flat on their faces they peered over the ridge, and their patience was rewarded. The ground sloped abruptly down for about a hundred feet, forming, with the jutting elbow of the cliff, a snug grassy hoek, or corner. Here among boulders and fragments of rock scattered about, were seven rhybok, two rams and five ewes.
They had been grazing; some were so yet, but others had thrown up their heads, and were listening intently.
They were barely two hundred yards distant. Quiet, cautious as had been the advance, their keen ears must have heard something. They stood motionless, gazing in the direction of the threatened peril, their ringed black horns and prominent eyes plainly distinguishable to the stalkers. One, a fine large ram, seemingly the leader of the herd, had already begun to move uneasily.
“Take the two rams as they stand,” whispered Suffield.
Crash! Then a long reverberating roar rolls back in thunder from the base of the cliff. Away go the bucks like lightning, leaving one of their number kicking upon the ground. This has fallen to Roden’s weapon; the other, the big ram, is apparently unscathed.
“I’ll swear he’s hit!” cried Suffield, in excitement and vexation. “Look at him, Musgrave. Isn’t he going groggily?”
Roden shaded his eyes to look after the leader of the herd, whose bounding form was fast receding into distance.
“Yes, he’s hit,” he said decidedly. “A fine buck too. He may run for miles with a pound of lead in him, though. They’re tough as copper-wire. We’d better sing out to Piet to bring on the horses, and try and keep him in sight anyhow.”
The fleeing bucks had now become mere specks, as, their stampede in no wise abated, they went bounding down the mountain-side more than half a mile away.
“Look there, Suffield,” went on Roden, still shading his eyes; “there are only the five ewes. Your ram’s hit, and can’t keep up, or else has split off of his own accord. Anyway, he’s hit, and will probably lie up somewhat under the krantz.”
Away they went, right along the base of the iron wall, which seemed to girdle the mountain for miles. And here Mona’s boast about being able to take care of herself was put to a very real and practical test, for the ground was rough and stony and the slope here and there dangerously steep.
Suddenly an animal sprang up, right in front of them, apparently out of the very rocks, at about a hundred yards.
“That’s him!” shouted Suffield, skimming past his companions, bent on diminishing the distance to get in a final shot. But this was not so easy, for a full-grown rhybok ram, even when wounded, is first-rate at; and this one was no exception to the rule, for he went so well and dodged so craftily behind every stone and tuft of grass that his pursuer would have to shoot him from the saddle, or not at all. Suffield, realising this, opened fire hastily, and of course missed clean.
“We’ve lost him!” he growled, making no effort to continue the pursuit.
But the quarry here suddenly altered its tactics. Possibly suspecting danger in front, it turned suddenly, and doubling, shot down the steep slope at lightning speed, and at right angles to its former course. There rang out a heavy report at some little distance behind. The buck leaped high in the air, then, turning a couple of somersaults, rolled a score of yards farther, and lay stone dead.
“By Jove, Musgrave, but you can shoot!” cried Suffield, as they met over the quarry. “Three to four hundred yards, and going like an express train. Allamaagtag! I grudge you that shot.”
“He’s yours, anyhow. First blood, you know.”
They examined the animal. Roden’s ball had drilled clean through the centre of the heart, but the first wound would have sickened anything less tenacious of life. The bullet had struck far back in the flank, passing through the animal’s body. Leaving the after-rider to perform the necessary rites and load up the buck upon his horse, together with the first one, which was already there, they moved up to a snug corner under the rocks for lunch.
“We haven’t done badly so far,” quoth Suffield, with a sandwich in one hand and a flask in the other.
“We must get one more,” said Roden, “or rather, you must. That’ll exactly ‘tie’ the shoot; one and a half apiece.”
“Well, and have I been so dreadfully in the way, Mr Musgrave?” said Mona.
“I am not aware that I ever predicted that contingency, Miss Ridsdale.”
“Not in words, perhaps; but you looked so glum when I announced my intention of coming, that, like the pack of cards instead of the Testament in the wicked conscript’s pocket, which turned the fatal bullet, it did just as well.”
“Did I? If so, it was inadvertently. But I daresay my conscience was pricking me in advance over that baboon I was destined to murder. That might account for it.”
The fact was that, however dubious had been his reception of the said announcement, Roden was in his heart of hearts conscious that the speaker’s presence with them that day, so far from being a drawback, had constituted rather an attraction than otherwise. Indeed, he was surprised to find how much so. When Mona Ridsdale chose to lay herself out to make the most of herself, she did not do it by halves. A good horsewoman, she looked splendidly well in the saddle, the well-fitting riding habit setting off the curves and proportions of her magnificent figure to every advantage. Moreover, she was in bright spirits, and to-day had laid herself out to be thoroughly companionable, and, to do her justice, had well succeeded; and more than once, when the pace had been too great, or the ground too rough, or a dark, haunting terror of her saddle turning had smote her, she had manfully repressed any word or look which might be construed into an appeal for consideration or aid. She had even been successful beyond her hopes, for Roden, silently observant, had not suffered this to escape him, though manifesting no sign thereof. So the trio, as they sat there under the cliff, lunching upon sandwiches in true sportsmanlike fashion, with a vast panorama of mountain and plain, craggy, turret-like summit, and bold, sweeping, grassy slope, spread out beneath and around for fifty miles on either hand, and the fresh, bracing breeze of seven thousand feet above sea-level tempering the golden and glowing sunshine which enveloped them, felt on excellent terms with each other and all the world.
“The plan now,” said Suffield, when they had taken it easy long enough, “will be to separate and go right round the berg. It is lying under the krantz we shall find the bucks, if anywhere.”
“Where does my part come in in that little scheme, Charlie?” said Mona. “Who am I to inflict myself upon?”
“Upon me, of course,” said Roden.
She shot a rapid glance at him as though to see if he were in earnest, and her heart beat quick. This time she was sure that no dubiousness lurked beneath his tone.
“Just as you like,” she rejoined; for her, quite subduedly. Then Piet, the after-rider, having received his instructions – viz., to start off homeward with the two bucks already slain – they separated accordingly.
Chapter Nine.
“Love that is First and Last…”
“Now you will have to take care of me,” began Mona, after some minutes of silence, as they started slowly to ride round beneath the cliff.
“A heavy responsibility for any one man during a whole hour or more.”
“You have not found it so hitherto?”
“Oh, then there were two of us. We took the risk between us. Hallo!” he broke off, “that’s a fine specimen!”
She followed his upward glance. A huge bird of prey had shot out from the cliff overhead and was circling in bold, powerful sweeps, uttering a loud, raucous scream.
“As good a specimen of a dasje-vanger as I ever saw,” went on Roden, still gazing upward. “Now, I wonder if a Snider bullet would blow it all to pieces at that distance!”
“You’ll never bring it down with a bullet?” said Mona eagerly.
“Not, eh? Perhaps not.”
The great eagle, jet black save for her yellow feet standing out against the thick dusky plumage, floated round and round in her grand gyrations, her flaming eye visible to the spectators as she turned her head from side to side. Roden, without dismounting, put up his rifle. Simultaneously with the report a cloud of black feathers flew from the noble bird, who, as though with untamable determination to disappoint her slayer, shot downward obliquely, with arrow-like velocity, and disappeared beyond the brow of the cliff overhead.
“You were right,” said Roden, slipping a fresh cartridge into his piece. “I did not bring it down, for with characteristic perversity, the ill-conditioned biped has chosen to yield up the ghost at the top of the cliff, whereas we are at the bottom.”
“Oh, can’t we go up to it? This is much better game than those poor little rhybok. But, wherever did you learn to shoot like that?”
“We can go up!” he replied, purposely or accidentally evading the last question. “That gully we passed, a little way back is climbable. But you had better wait below. It will be hard work.”
“So that’s how you propose taking care of me – to leave me all alone? Not if I know it. The place looked perfectly safe.”
Safe it was: a narrow, staircase-like couloir, consisting of a series of natural steps; the rocks on either side heavily festooned with thick masses of the most beautiful maidenhair fern. Leaving the horses beneath, they began the climb, and after a couple of hundred feet of this they stood on the summit of the mountain.
The summit was as flat as a table, and covered with long coarse grass, billowing in the fresh strong breeze which swept it like the surface of a lake. Around, beneath, free and vast, spread the rolling panorama of mountain and plain.
“Ah! this is to live indeed!” broke from Mona. “I don’t know that I ever enjoyed a day so much in my life.”
The other did not immediately look at her, but when he presently did steal a keen, but furtive glance at her face, there was something there, which, combined with the tone wherein she had uttered the above words, set him thinking.
“I don’t see anything of the dasje-vanger,” he said, at length; “and yet this is about the place where it should have fallen. It may have fluttered into the long grass, but couldn’t have gone far with that bullet hole through it. Now, you search that way, and I’ll search this.”
For a few minutes they searched hither and thither; then a cry from Mona brought him to her side.
“This is the place,” she said. “Look!”
She stood as near as she dared to the brow of the cliff, pointing downwards. On the very verge, fluttering among the grass bents, were several small feathers, jet black, and such as might have come out of the breast of the great bird. Roden advanced to the brink.
“This is the place!” he declared, leaning over. “And, look! there lies our quarry, stone dead. The spiteful brute has chosen a difficult place, if not an inaccessible one.”
“Where? Let me see. Hold my hand, while I look down, for I don’t half like it.”
This he did, and shudderingly she peered over. From where they stood the cliff fell for about twenty feet obliquely, but very steep, and grown over with tufts of grass, to a narrow ledge scarcely two feet wide; below this – space. But upon this ledge lay the great eagle, with outstretched wings, stone dead, its head hanging over the abyss.
“I can get at it there, fortunately,” muttered Roden.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going down to pick up the bird.”
“You are not.”
He stared.
“But I want it,” he urged. “It is too fine a specimen to be left lying there.”
“Never mind; you can shoot another. Now, don’t go, don’t!”
Again he recognised the expression which came into her face, as with startled eyes and voice which shook with the very abandon of her entreaty, she stood there before him. What then? He had seen that look in other faces, but what had come of it!
“I am going down,” he repeated.
“You cannot; you shall not. It is too horrible. You will be killed before my eyes. Won’t you give it up because I ask you?”
“No.”
There were men who would have given a great deal to have heard Mona Ridsdale speak to them in that tone, who would willingly have risked their lives, rather than have refrained from risking them, at her request. This one, however, answered short and straight and with brutal indifference, “No.”
They looked at each other for a moment, as though both realised that this was a strange subject for a conflict of will, then she said,
“So you will not give it up?”
“No. It is an easy undertaking, and for me a safe one.”
She turned away without another word, and he began his descent.
This, however, was less simple than it looked, as is usually the case, or rather, so appallingly simple that a slight slip, or the loosening of a grass tussock, would send the average climber whirling into space. But Roden Musgrave was an experienced hand on mountains, and thoroughly understood the principle of distributing his weight. In a very short space of time he was standing on the ledge, and had picked up the dead bird.
“I can’t throw it up,” he cried, for the benefit of his companion, who, once he had began his descent, had not been able to resist watching its progress, and lying flat on the brink was marking every step. “It’s too heavy. I shall have to sling it around me somehow.”
“Make haste and come out of that grisly position,” was all she replied.
And her definition of it was not an unmerited one. The ledge was hardly wide enough to turn upon, and from beneath they had both seen the great rock wall, in its unbroken smoothness, considerably upwards of a hundred feet in height.
Then with the dead eagle slung around him, he began his return, inch by inch, step by step, holding on by every tuft of grass or projecting stone, carefully testing each before trusting any portion of his weight to it – she the while watching every step with a fearful fascination.
All of a sudden something gave way. One moment more, and he would have been in safety. Roden felt himself going – going. Still, with consummate presence of mind, he strove to distribute his weight. All in vain. He could not recover his lost footing. He was sliding with increased momentum, sliding to the brink of the terrible height.
Mona’s blood turned to ice within her. She was too stricken even to shriek, in the unspeakable horror of the moment. Her fingers dug into the ground, instinctively clenched, as she lay there, gazing down, an appalled and powerless spectator.
He, for his part, did not look up. The dust and stones slid in streams from beneath him and leaped over the ledge into space – then his descent stopped. He seemed to be flattening himself against the height, clinging for all he knew how. And then, as if to add to the gloomy depression of this horrible peril, there stole up a dark, misty cloud, spreading its black wings around the summit of the mountain, shedding a twilight as of fear and disaster. Mona found her voice.
“Oh, try and rest a little while and collect yourself,” she said; “then make another attempt!”
“I can’t move,” came the response; “and – I can’t hold on here much longer. I believe my left wrist is broken. I am suffering the torments of hell.”
Mona was almost beside herself. Roden Musgrave was in a bad way indeed when such an admission could be wrung from him.
“Dear, don’t give up!” she cried, in a wail of despairing tenderness, such as had never been wrung from her lips before. “Make one more effort; this time, because I ask you. A yard or two more, and I shall be able to reach you.”
Was this the woman who had stood shrinkingly to gaze over the brink, and had quickly retreated with a shudder? Now, as she lay there, extending her arm down as far as it would go, in order to afford him the necessary hand-grasp, all fear on her own behalf seemed to have left her. But the man, flattened against the face of the cliff with the dead eagle slung to his back, seemed not able to move, and as she had said, it was but a yard or two farther.
But the effort must be made. Roden was only resting for one final struggle. It was made. Reaching upward he grasped the extended hand, then let go again.
“Hold it! hold it!” cried Mona, appalled by the awful whiteness which had spread over his face, evoked as it was by the agony he was suffering.
“No, I won’t, I should only drag you down.”
“You would not. I am very firm up here,” she replied. “I can hold you till – till help comes.”
He wriggled up a little higher, then with his uninjured hand he grasped hers. A sick faintness came upon him. The world seemed to go round. The brink of the cliff, the brave, eager face and love-lit eyes, the swaying grass bents, now rimy with misty scud, all danced before his vision. He felt cold as ice, that deathly numbness which precedes a faint. But for the strong, warm clasp of the hand which now held his, Roden Musgrave’s days were numbered. Well indeed was it for him, that the splendid frame of its owner was not merely the perfection of feminine symmetry, but encased a very considerable modicum of sheer physical strength.
“Roden, darling!” she murmured. “Save yourself if only that you may do so through me. You have surprised my secret, but it shall be as though you had not, if you prefer it.”
It was a strange love-making, as they faced each other thus, the one overhanging certain death, the other raised entirely out of her physical fears, resolute to save this life, which after all might not belong to her. Thus they faced each other, and the dark whirling blackness of the glooming cloud lowered thicker and thicker around them.
“Let me go, Mona!” he gasped forth wearily, in his semi-faint. “I may drag you down. Good-bye. Now – let go!”
She almost laughed. The strong grasp tightened upon his hand firmer than ever.
“If you go, I go too. Now I am going to shout. Perhaps Charlie will hear.” And lifting up her voice she sent forth a long, clear, ringing call; then another and another.
No answer.
Then, as the minutes went by, the bolt of a wild despair shot through Mona’s brave heart. Strong as she was, she could not hold him for ever, nor was he able, in the agony of his broken wrist, to raise himself any farther. Her brain reeled. Wild-eyed with despair she strove to pierce the opaque grey curtain which was crusting her face and hair with rime. It was winter, and this table-topped mountain was of considerable elevation. What if this thick chill cloud was the precursor of a heavy snowfall? Charlie, acting on the idea that they had missed each other in the mist, might have gone home. Every muscle in her fine frame seemed cracking. The strain was momentarily becoming greater, more intense, and again she sent forth her loud, clear call, this time thrilling with a fearful note of despair.
It was answered. Eagerly, breathlessly she listened. Yes – it came from below the cliff. Charlie had arrived at the spot where they had left their horses. She shouted again. The answer told that he was climbing the gully by which they had ascended.
“Do you hear that? We are safe now. A few minutes more, and Charlie will be here.”
“It is you who have done it, Mona,” he murmured.
Then she spoke no more. Now that succour was near at hand, she found herself actually revelling in the position, and a delight in making the most of it while it lasted was qualified by the agony Roden was suffering, as also by a strange feeling of jealousy that she had not been able to carry out the rescue alone and unaided; of resentment that she should be driven to call in the help of another.
“That’s it, is it?” said Suffield, prompt to master the situation at a glance. “Now, Mona, I’ll relieve you of this amount of avoirdupois, and when you have rested for a minute you hold on to me for all you know how, and I’ll lug him up in a second.”
The while he had got hold of Roden by the hand and wrist; then in a trice had, as he said, dragged the sufferer over the brink and into safety, for he was a powerful man.
“So that’s what it was all about?” he went on, as he cut loose the dead eagle. “The dasje-vanger nearly revenged itself. How do you feel, Musgrave, old chap?”
“Like an idiot,” said Roden faintly, as he took a liberal pull at the flask the other had been swift to tender him, and began to feel the better therefor. “I never could stand being hurt. Though hard enough in other ways, anything in the way of pain turns me sick. But, Suffield, if it had not been for Mona I should have been a dead man.”
“Oh, ‘Mona,’ is it?” thought Suffield, with an internal grin. Then aloud, rather anxiously, “Anything else besides the wrist?”
