“Man! That’s nothing,” said Sybrandt, his mouth full of the delicacy alluded to, while he replaced a large slice of the same upon the embers to cook a little more. “What price having to eat snake?”
“No. I’d draw the line at that,” answered Percival quickly.
“Would you? Wait until you’re stuck on a little island for three days with your boat drifted away, and a river swarming with crocodiles all round you. You’d scoff snake fast enough, and be glad to get him.”
“Tell us the yarn,” said Percival wearily.
But before the other could comply, a message from the officer in command arrived desiring his presence, and Sybrandt, snatching another great mouthful of his broiling horseflesh, got up and went.
“Another wet night, I’m afraid?” said Blachland philosophically, reaching for a red-hot stick to light his pipe, which the rain dripping from his weather-beaten hat-brim was doing its best to put out. “Here, have a smoke, Spence,” becoming alive to the wistful glance wherewith he whom he had named was regarding the puffs he was emitting.
Spence stretched forth his hand eagerly for the pouch, then thrust it back again.
“No. It’s your last pipe,” he said. “I won’t take it.”
“Take it, man. I expect there’s a good accumulation of ’bacco dust in my old coat pockets. I can fall back on that at a pinch.”
Spence complied, less out of selfishness than an unwillingness to go against the other in any single detail. A curious change had come over him since his rescue—since the man he had wronged, as he thought, had ridden into the very jaws of death to bring him out. He regarded his rescuer now with feelings akin to veneration. He had at the time, expressed his sorrow and regret in shamefaced tones, but Blachland had met him with the equable reassurance that it didn’t matter. And then he had eagerly volunteered for this expedition because Blachland was in it, and once there, he had watched his rescuer with untiring pertinacity to see if there was nothing he could do for him, even if he could risk his life for him. More than once he had striven stealthily to forego his own scanty rations when they were messing together, pretending he loathed food, so that there might be a little more for this man whom he now regarded in the light of a god; but this and other attempts had been seen through by their object, and effectually, though tactfully, frustrated. Hunger and exhaustion, however, are somewhat of an antidote to even the finest of finer feelings, and Justin Spence was destined to experience the truth of this.