The Empty Sack

by Basil King

They were talking to each other, and, though Teddy could not make out their words, he heard Flynn's gurgle of a laugh. To his fevered imagination, it was a diabolic laugh, suggestive of handcuffs and torture.

The thought of handcuffs frenzied him. Of the sacrilegious touch on his person, the links set the final mark. Rather than submit to them he would shoot anyone, preferably himself. For shooting himself the minute had come, and he decided to do it through the temple. The aim through the heart might miscarry; there was no chance of miscarriage through the brain. All that remained for him now was to know the moment when.

"Don't shoot till you see the whites of their eyes."

Some trick of memory brought the tag back to him. He knew that it applied to the shooting of an enemy, but in this case it suited himself. He couldn't see the whites of their eyes as yet, for through the grasses and over the slimy ground they advanced but slowly. That gave him the longer to live. He might live for three minutes, possibly for five. Even a minute was something.

But he was ready. He couldn't say that he had no fear, because he was all fear; but for the very reason that he was all fear, he was frozen, numb. Only, the hand that held the pistol shook. He couldn't control it. All the more, then, must he do it through the brain, since he found by experiment that he could steady the muzzle against his temple. He didn't dare so to hold it long, lest that impulse of acting before he thought might deprive him of these last precious seconds of life. So he let the thing rest on the peephole, pointing outward, like a gun on board ship. He found, too, that this steadied his eye. He could squint along the barrel right at the two big figures lumbering through the morass.

"Don't shoot till you see the whites of their eyes."

Flynn looked up, a laugh on his lips at this absurd adventure. The boy saw the whites of his eyes, and, as far as he himself knew, his mind went blank. He always declared that he heard no sound. He only saw Flynn throw up his arms with a kind of stifled shout—stagger—try to regain his lost balance—and go tumbling, face downward, into the long grass. Jackman fell, too, though not so prone but that he could partially raise himself, half supported by his left arm, while, without being able to face toward the road, he waved his right to the motors flashing by.

For Teddy mind-action ceased. He was nothing but mad instinct. He knew he must have fired—must have fired twice—that the hand that was to shoot into his temple had betrayed him. He knew, too, that he couldn't shoot into his temple—that great as was his terror of the handcuffs, his terror of this thing was worse. Flinging the pistol across the floor, his one impulse was to save himself.

As he had foreseen, his mind, once it began to work, worked quickly. He saw that the grass growing up to the door of the shack was tall, and hardly beaten down by his footsteps. Lying flat like a lizard, he wriggled his way into it. The very yielding of the swampy bottom beneath his weight was in his favor. By a sense, such as that which had waked him up, he knew that motors were stopping in the road, that people were leaping out, that Flynn and Jackman were the objects of everyone's concern, and that, in the mystery as to what had happened to them, no one's attention was as yet directed to himself. He made for the back of the shack, writhing his way round the two corners, and heading out toward the center of the marsh. It was needful to do this, since the shanty and its neighborhood would soon be explored, and he must, if possible, be lost in the swampy tracklessness.

Though progress of necessity was slow, he was amazed at the distance he was putting between himself and danger. Oh, if it was only night! If a thundercloud would only come up and darken the sky! But it was the brilliant, pitiless sunshine of an August afternoon, with not a shred of atmosphere to help him. Still he writhed and writhed and writhed his way onward, making the pace of a snake when half of its body is dead. He was no longer Teddy Follett; he was no longer so much as an animal. He was one big agony of mind, which becomes an agony of body; and yet he was eager to live.