“He was last heard of out scouting with two other men near the Shangani River. They were surrounded and attacked by a party of twelve natives armed with rifles and assegais. One of them, Britton, managed to get away and ride to the main column for help, and when he got back with a patrol an hour later the other fellow, Vincent, was lying there wounded, surrounded by the bodies of dead natives, but Kinsella was nowhere to be found—and has never been heard of or seen since. Vincent could tell nothing but that just before he became unconscious Kinsella was still standing over his body shooting—”
Not to know! Not to know! Torturing visions stole upon me; visions of men lying wounded to death; parched with bitter thirst; waiting, waiting for reinforcements that never came; for help that would never come!
Then the terrible yet merciful remembrance that it was all so long ago! Many, many days had passed since it happened. If those splendid, heroic men lay there still they must be of the great, noble company of the dead. I looked up at the grey arch above me, blurred and dim with rain, and thinking of the unsheltered dead, lying with eyes wide open to the skies, was thankful that it fell so gently and pityingly down.
“O loved ones lying far away,
What word of love can dead lips send?
O wasted dust! O senseless clay!
Is this the end? Is this the end?
“Peace, peace! we wrong the noble dead
To vex their solemn slumber so.
Though childless and with thorn-crowned head
Up the steep path must England go—”
I could not remember at that moment who wrote those great lines. I only know that I thought there was strange healing in them for mourning hearts. There seemed suddenly something peaceful in the thought of Death; something that lulled and dulled the active burning pain of uncertainty.
There seemed even a kind of mercy in Elizabeth Marriott’s definite tidings, terrible as they were. She knew at least that her man was at rest from torment; suffering was done with him; pain had been defeated.
But—Not to know! Not to know!
Before twelve o’clock that night Maurice Stair came to me and told me that he had determined to leave at once with two good colonial boys, Jacob and Jonas, to find Anthony Kinsella if possible, or at least get definite tidings of his fate.
“If he is alive I’ll bring him back,” he said, in the quiet, modest way I had always found so attractive in him, and kissing the hand I gave him he went on his way.