"And now, Dermot, you see that we are watched, waylaid, that we shall certainly be attacked and robbed by these fierce mountaineers; you must resolve at once on what course to pursue."
"Sell my life as dearly as I can," muttered Denis, grasping one of his pistols.
"No; mount your horse, your good fleet horse, and make your way back with all speed, under the cover of night. Your animal is not knocked up like ours. He may at least bear you far enough to place you beyond immediate pursuit. You must of course abandon your property, and it may serve to satisfy for a time the rapacity of these wolves. I do not think that the muleteers, who will not attempt to fight, run any serious risk; they will merely lose the beasts. But you—you must not delay for an hour your escape back to India."
"Escape back to India!" exclaimed Denis, indignantly starting to his feet. "What do you take me for, boy? Do you think that I, Dermot Denis, am the man to run off from the shadow of danger like a cur that flies yelping away if you do but lift up a stone. Do you think that I am the man to endure being twitted with having begun an enterprise which I had not the spirit to carry out, a man to save his own neck by leaving his comrade to be murdered by these brutal Afghans!"
"My danger is less then yours," observed Walter. "In the first place I have the protection of poverty; in the second I have made friends with the child of a chief."
"What a bit of luck for us!" exclaimed Denis, in a completely altered tone, throwing himself again on the ground beside the glowing embers of the fire. "I certainly was born under some auspicious star! No sooner do I lose my rogue of a guide, than up starts a powerful chief to act both as guide and protector. Of course I'll be hand and glove with this Assad Khan; he'll introduce me at Kandahar as his most particular friend. Of course I'll make him no end of promises,—one must never be sparing of them. I'll tell the chief that when I get back to India, I'll send him my horse—a free gift—and half-a-dozen others loaded with jewels for pretty Sultána. I'll make it the chief's interest to stand my friend. I'll see more of Afghan life than any being in the world ever saw before. Stay, stay, I must write up my journal; where have I put my ink-bottle?"
Denis, now in wild spirits, wrote for about five minutes as if writing for life; he then threw down his pen, and pushed the paper from him. "That's enough for to-night, I shall have plenty of time to-morrow to write up my story."
"Will he have plenty of time?" thought Walter to himself. "Is not my gay, bold comrade beset with dangers not the less real because he chooses to shut his eyes as he takes the leap which may land him—one shrinks from asking where! I am the only Christian near him, the only being who can speak to him of that soul which may so soon be required. And yet, coward and faithless friend that I am, I sit, as it were, with lips sealed, watching his career towards the precipice over which he so soon may plunge with a laugh on his lips!"
"Dermot," said Walter, aloud; "even you must own that our lives are uncertain."
"Yes; it's a toss up whether you and I ever see old Ireland again."