“But Salisbury is seventy miles!”
“Sixty when you know your map.”
“Well, sixty!—without food! And you’ve got no boots!”
It was no use offering his own. He was a big man and his feet were on a generous scale. As for Hammond, he could not forbear to smile when he looked at the travesties from which his toes protruded—a few rags and ribbons of dark blue silk.
“No; but I’ve got feet.”
He had indeed—the most famous feet at Harvard in his time, and in Africa at any time. All the same, he cursed himself for criminal carelessness in leaving his camp improperly shod; for he too knew that sixty miles barefoot through an enemy’s country, over krantz and kop and rough unbroken ground, was not going to be the funniest thing that had ever happened to him. Still, they couldn’t sit whispering here forever, and Cara de Rivas had got to be saved.
She had stood the strain well up till now, but it was doubtful if she would last out much longer. And she must not die. No woman in the same case would be allowed to die if he could help it. But only he knew the stain and disgrace it would be on him to let her of all women die, whose death would give him his heart’s desire.
When de Rivas spoke again, his whisper had grown fainter. His thoughts appeared to have taken the same direction as Hammond’s.
“How am I going to keep her alive, Hammond? She can’t go on without water.”
“I shall fill the can before I start, and you must try and make it spin out for three days. I promise you I shan’t be longer than that.”