Then late one afternoon shouts on the clear April air! Shouts and cries, hoots and yells of triumph from afar—nearer, nearer, until right at the laager gates; then crowds of men rushing in, all thrusting, heaving, shoving to be near a central figure—someone being borne high on men’s shoulders!
Diane, standing in the verandah of the gaoler’s house where Carr lay sick, shaded her eyes with her hand to see better through the sunset rays. They were calling Hammond’s name—but was that Maryon Hammond?—that haggard, tattered wreck, brown with dirt, disfigured by thorn-scratches and dried blood, ragged, shirtless, with bare arms sticking through a sleeveless coat!
Yes, it was Maryon Hammond; he looked up at her as they carried him past, and it was as though he saluted her with a sword.
Ah, God! if she could have gone to him and taken his head to her breast. But how could she?—he was not hers but another woman’s! All she might do was rejoice that a brave man still lived. Blindly, with faltering feet, she found her way back to Carr’s room where she had been sitting when the noise came. She wanted to share the news with someone—someone who loved him too. Afterwards they sat silent in the twilight. Carr with a man’s philosophy was content now and could possess his soul in patience until Hammond came to him. But Diane knew not what power helped her to sit there so still, listening to the sounds in the gaol yard. For they had not discontinued for a moment, those sounds. Always men’s voices continued to rise and fall, shouting excitedly, crying Hammond’s name, questioning, even it seemed remonstrating. There was much jingle of harness too, and the sound of horses being led out. At last, a wilder hubbub than ever, an uproar of mad hurrahs, cheer upon cheer ringing on the evening air, then—the thud of horses’ hoofs and the rattle of cart wheels!
Some word he caught in all that wild bedlam of sound made Carr spring out of bed and tear down the passage that led to the verandah, with Diane Heywood running after him.
“What is it? What is it? Where is he?”
After the first amazed stare at this madman in pyjamas there were many to cry him the news.
“He’s gone back again!—What do you think of that? After doing sixty miles in his bare feet!—Gone back to get de Rivas and his wife! Our fellows, twenty of ’em were ready to go alone—but nothing on earth or off it could stop him from going too—not the Judge, nor the Administrator, nor an Archangel from heaven—said they could never find ’em without him—or might find ’em too late! His feet are all to bits—I tell you, man, he hasn’t got feet any more—only some black currant jelly!—They’re so bad he has to ride in a cart!—but he would go—he would go. Whether he’ll ever come back again—with those feet—”
But he did come back. It took longer to bring in the two refugees than it had taken Maryon Hammond to walk the distance in his bare feet, for there was fighting to be done on the return journey; but Cara de Rivas and her husband were safe and sound in Salisbury at last, none the worse for their three days’ vigil.