“Whoop! Hooray!” yelled Hicks, wild with excitement. “Grand old shot, that! Thought you were a gone coon, by Jove!”
The other quickly slipped a couple of cartridges into the smoking breech of his gun, and looked up with a slight smile at this remark; and what he saw soon changed the smile into an outright laugh. For Hicks was staring at him, speechless and open-mouthed, while even Armitage looked somewhat dumbfoundered.
“The devil!” ejaculated Hicks, and relapsed into staring again.
“That’s uncivil,” remarked the stranger, drily.
“Why, hang it, it is—Claverton, no one else! Arthur, old boy, where on earth have you dropped from? I vow this is the best thing that’s happened for years. We thought you must be dead and buried, hearing nothing about you,” and leaping to the ground, honest Hicks wrung his former comrade’s hand as if he would crush that remarkably useful member.
Something in the last phrase jarred upon Claverton. Lilian had said much the same thing when they had met.
“Well, here I am at any rate. Turned up again like the proverbial ‘shise’ coin,” he replied. “How’s yourself? Flourishing apparently. You look as if ‘the holy estate’ agreed with you. And Jack? I say, Jack; bet you two to one in anything you like you don’t drop that chap scuttling away over there.”
“Done for you!” cried Armitage, sighting his rifle and drawing a bead on one of the retreating enemy, distant some seven hundred yards.
“No. Hand over!” cried Claverton. “Missed him clean. Give you another shot, though.”
But the other shot was likewise a failure; and the Gcaleka got off scot-free to rejoin, if he listed, the bosom of his family.