Fix Bay'nets Part 67

"But I aren't had nothing to-day, sir," pleaded Gedge, "and my inside's going mad. Wolves? Why, I feel just as if one was tearing me."

"Take all the provisions left, and eat as you go."

"And what about you, sir?"

"Never mind me. Go at once."

"But it'll be dark as pitch in 'alf-a-hour, sir. How am I to see my way?"

"I told you. The descent will be easy. You can almost slide down all the way, for the snow is getting gla.s.sy again, and you must guide yourself by leaving the enemy's fire on the right. Look! it is glowing brightly now."

"That's right, sir, till I get to the bottom. But what then?"

"Gedge, are you going to fail me in this terrible emergency?"

"Not me, sir," cried the lad excitedly. "I'll stick to you till we both goes under fighting to the last, for they don't want to make prisoners of us; their knives are too sharp."

"Then go."

"But I'm sure I couldn't find the way, sir. I should be taking the first turning to the left, or else to the right, or tumbling into another hole like this, or doing some stoopid thing. I'm no use, sir, without my orficer to tell me what to do."

Bracy drew a deep breath and pressed his lips together, as he fought hard to keep down his anger against his follower.

"I have told you what to do," he said at last quite calmly. "You must use your brains."

"Never had much, sir," replied Gedge bitterly; "and now they're about froze up with cold and hungriness and trouble. I ain't fit to send on such a job as this, sir. I'm sure to m.u.f.f it."

"Do you want to find out some day, my lad, that those poor comrades of ours have been ma.s.sacred to a man through your hanging back from doing what might have saved them?"

"I wish I may die if I do, sir!" cried Gedge pa.s.sionately.

"Then go."

"But I'm cold and hungry, sir, and it's getting dark, and I don't know my way."

"Crush those feelings down like a hero, and go."

"Hero, sir? Me a hero!" cried Gedge bitterly. "Oh? there's none of that stuff in me."

There was just enough light reflected from the upper peaks to enable the couple to see each other's faces--the one frowning and angry, and belying the calm, stern fixedness into which it had been forced; the other wild, anxious, and with the nerves twitching sharply at the corners of the eyes and mouth, as if its owner were grimacing in mockery of the young officer's helplessness and suffering.

"Gedge," said Bracy suddenly, after making an effort as if to swallow down the rage and despair from which he suffered.

"Yes, sir, I know what you're going to say; but you're awful bad. Now, you have a bit to eat, and then go to sleep, and when you wake up let's see if I can't manage to get you on one of those flat bits o' slaty stone, and then I'll get a strap to it, and pull you down the slope-- you'll quite slide like--and when we're off the snow I'll pig-a-back you to the first wood, and we'll hide there, and I'll keep helping you on a bit till we get to this here Jack-and-Jill Valley. You see, the job can't be done without you."

"This is all shuffling and scheming, Gedge, to escape doing your duty,"

said Bracy sternly.

"Is it, sir?" said the lad, with an a.s.sumption of innocence.

"You know it is, sir. You don't want to go?"

"Well, sir, I suppose that is about the size of it."

"Do you want me to look upon you as a contemptible cur?" said Bracy, flas.h.i.+ng out into anger now.

"No, sir; o' course not."

"I see how it is. I've been believing you to be all that is manly and true, while all the time I've been labouring under a gross mistake, for now you are put to the test you are only base metal. Go; leave me.

Gedge, you are a miserable, contemptible coward after all."

"Yes, sir; that's it, sir," said the lad bitterly; "bit o' common bra.s.s as got into the service, and you orficers and old Gee and the rest of you drilled up and polished and dressed up and put some gilt on; but when yer comes to rub it off, I'm on'y a bit o' bra.s.s after all."

"Yes, you know exactly--coward!--dog!"

"Don't, sir!" cried the poor fellow in a choking voice; "don't! It's like laying it on to a chap with a wire whip."

"Then do your duty. Go."

"I can't, sir; I can't," cried the lad, literally writhing, as if the blows were falling upon his back and sides. "I dessay I am a coward, but I'd follow you anywheres, sir, if the bullets was whistling round us, and them devils were waiting for us with their knives; but I can't go and leave you now, sir. You ain't fit to leave. It'd be like killing you--murdering of you, sir, with the cold and starvation."

"It is your duty to go."

"But you don't know how bad you are, sir," pleaded the lad, with the great sobs struggling to escape from his breast. "You don't know, sir; but I do, sir. You'd be frozen stiff before it was light again."

"Perhaps; but I should die knowing that an effort was being made to save those we have left behind."

"You've done all you can do, sir," pleaded Gedge pa.s.sionately. "We can't do no more."

"I can't, but you can. I call upon you once more to go and do this thing. If you have any manhood in you, go."

"I can't, sir," groaned Gedge.

"You coward!--it's your duty to go."

"It ain't, sir; it can't be, to leave my orficer to die like this. I know it can't. Why, if I did, and got the help, and took the men back, and the Colonel got to know how, he'd think it warn't worth getting it at such a price. He'd call me a cowardly dog and a hound, and the lads would groan and spit at me. Why, they'd cob me when they got me alone, and I couldn't say a word, because I should feel, as I always should to the last day I lived, that I'd been a miserable sneak."

"I tell you it is your duty, my man," cried Bracy again.

"Don't send me, sir! I ain't afraid," pleaded Gedge once more. "It's leaving you to die in the cold and dark. I can't go!--I can't go!"

Bracy struggled up at this, supporting himself with his left hand, moved now as he was by his companion's devotion; but he choked down all he longed to say in the one supreme effort he was making to fulfil the mission he had failed in by another hand.

"I am your officer, sir. You are a soldier, sworn to serve your country and your Queen."

Gedge looked down at the speaker through the gloom, and saw him fumbling beneath his sheepskin coat with his right hand. The next minute he had drawn his revolver, and Gedge heard it click.

"You hear me, sir?" cried Bracy sternly.