A wave of returning consciousness swept over the face of the wounded man. He opened his eyes, and there was a gleam of recognition in them. Then he closed them, knitting his brows as though in pain.
Thus Hyland Thornhill succeeded in rescuing his father—but—was it too late?
Chapter Thirty Two.
Thornhill’s Story.
“Will you go in and see him, Evelyn? No, it’s not you Edala. He wants to talk to Evelyn this time.”
Hyland had just come from his father’s sick room. Both girls, awaiting the summons, had started up. Some days had passed since the rescue party had returned to Kwabulazi, but the wounded man did not seem to improve. The doctor feared lest erysipelas might set in, it was even possible that the patient might lose his sight, for the wound had perforce been dressed in rough and ready fashion at the time—indeed but that they had put their best foot foremost in the retreat they would have been attacked by a force whose overwhelming strength would have rendered massacre almost a certainty. As it was they were pressed hard to within a mile of the entrenchments; but some at any rate among the savages had had experience in trying to rush that very entrenchment, and had no stomach for a repetition thereof. So the impi had drawn off.
To her dying day Edala will never forget the return of that rescue party—and the lifting down of her father’s half—unconscious form from the horse on which Hyland had supported him—the deathly pallor of the drawn face, the beard all clotted with dried blood, the hands limp and nerveless. So utterly did she give way, in the plenitude of her grief and gnawing remorse that several of the men had to turn away with a suspicious choke.
“Too late! Too late!” she moaned, throwing herself on the ground beside him. “You said it would be, and it is.”