"Kearney, Kearney, Crosby, wake up! Look alive! The boy has gone!"
But Starlight was a man of action; he was never one to wait for others when he could do a thing for himself. Before Alec and Martin, with all their eagerness, had travelled forty yards, he was leaning out of the window holding the candle above his head. The flame never flickered in the still and sultry air. In an instant he had seen them; either the light had fallen on them from the window or else their white clothes showed up against the line of dark trees beyond them. Anyway Starlight saw them, and Alec heard him sing out—
"There he is—why, there are two!"
Crosby also had heard it, and judging from the sound of Starlight's voice he knew he was at the window. He turned for one second and saw the light gleaming on the bright barrel of the pistol that Starlight was pointing at them. He just had time to lay his powerful hands on Alec's shoulder and swing the lad in front of him that he might cover him with his own great body from Starlight's fire.
Alec did not know what he meant by this, and half looked round, but Crosby urged him on. That moment Alec heard two reports of a pistol follow each other in instantaneous succession, and feeling his shoulders gripped with a convulsive clutch he heard Martin say in a broken voice—
"I'm shot!"
He understood then what his friend had done for him; he knew that to screen him from Starlight's fire he had interposed his own body, and to save his life Martin had risked his own. He could not say anything of this just then; his feeling of his friend's devotion was too deep for words, and all his thoughts and all his energy were at once centred on getting Martin safely away. There was no time to waste in talking, for Alec heard answering shouts from the men in the other part of the house, and he knew that in a moment they would be in full pursuit. All that he said was—
"Can you keep up?"
Martin just said, "I'll try," and seizing Alec's right arm, partly to guide him and partly to support himself, he tore along again. Although his right arm hung broken and useless by his side, and although he could feel the hot blood pouring down his body from the wound in his broad breast, where the bullet had struck him after passing through his arm, he never faltered. For one brief second when he was struck the world seemed to swim before him, but clenching his strong teeth together he regained command of himself and resolved, with the noble obstinacy of natures such as his, that he would hold out until he had taken Alec to the place where the horses were, or die attempting it.
