But the hand that held his glass trembled so violently that he spilled nearly half of what he had just mixed for himself. At the same time Peters burst into a roar of laughter, but not at this.
“There’s a nigger,” he explained, “who keeps bobbing his head round a stone, but he’s in too much of a funk to keep it there; and the expression on his face as he bobs it back again is enough to kill a cat.”
Ancram stared, and gave a sickly grin. He couldn’t have raised a spontaneous laugh then—no not to save his life. Yet these other two were keenly enjoying the joke.
“They won’t show in a hurry,” said Lamont. “These magazine guns of ours have put the fear of the Lord into them.”
“Will they go away then, and leave us?” said Ancram eagerly.
“Not much. They’ll lie low till it’s dark. Then they’ll have things all their own way.”
Ancram went pale again.
“But—but— D’you mean to say,” he stammered, “that we shall be—at their mercy?”
“Just that,” answered Lamont, who was busy lighting his pipe. “I say, Ancram, it’s different here now to that day at Courtland Mere. Slightly warmer, eh?”
He took a fiendish pleasure in the situation, as the incidents of that memorable day came before him once more. Then, and since, this man had held him up as a coward, this man standing here now with the blanched face and staring eyes. Yet if ever any man was in a blue funk, that man was Ancram—here at this moment.