“Jabez! Jabez! Come back!” Jabez turned, shook his head, waved the pike with warlike ferocity, and shouted something in reply that came faintly, indistinguishably against the breeze. Then he resumed his march, leaving his commanding officer alone.
It was over half-an-hour later that Jeremy found the Speaker. By that time the fighting was all over, and the fields, hardly changed in appearance by being dotted with a number of corpses, so soon to be resolved into the same substance as their own, were quiet again. In the course of his search, Jeremy encountered much that he would rather not have seen. He saw too many men lying face downwards with wounds in their backs, too many with tied hands and cut throats. He realized that a battlefield can too literally resemble a slaughter-house; and these evidences of the ferocity of an unwarlike race appalled him. And he even found one of the mercenary officers, of the sort that he had observed earlier in the day and had disliked, in the act of dispatching a prisoner, preparatory to going through his pockets. He advanced angrily on the man, who did not know him and turned with a curse from his just accomplished work to suggest that Jeremy’s throat would prove equally vulnerable. Held off by Jeremy’s pistol, he strolled away with insolent unconcern. Jeremy continued his way and at last discovered the Speaker, a couple of miles beyond the line on which the battle had been decided. As he came up, he could see that the old man’s dress was disheveled, and that his horse was lathered and weary, presumably from taking part in the pursuit.
By this time he was faint and exhausted, and he did not announce himself in the confident manner that might have been permitted him. He rode up slowly to the crossroads, where the Speaker and Thomas Wells were standing under a sign-post, and dismounted. They were deep in a conversation and at first did not see him. The Speaker’s thick voice came in rapid jerky bursts. His reins were lying on the horse’s neck, and he gesticulated violently with his hands. The Canadian, whose eyes seemed to Jeremy to burn with a fiercer red than ever, spoke more slowly, but there was a kind of intense richness and gusto in his tone. Jeremy felt too inert to make any sound to attract their attention; but as he came nearer Thomas Wells touched the Speaker’s arm and pronounced deeply:
“There’s your hero!”
The Speaker dismounted and, running without consideration of dignity to Jeremy, clasped the astonished young man in his arms.
“You have done it! You have done it!” he cried again and again. “There is nothing left of them!” Then, when his transports had abated a little, he went on more calmly. “We have smashed them to pieces. The rebel army has ceased to exist, and the Chairman has been killed.”
“Killed?” cried Jeremy, in surprise.
“Yes, killed,” the Canadian interjected, still in the saddle and leaning down a little to them. “There’s no doubt that he’s dead. I killed him myself.”
“But was that wise——” Jeremy began. “Wouldn’t it have been better to keep him? It would have given us a hold over his people.”
“That’s what he said,” the Canadian answered drily. “He seemed quite anxious about it. But I always go on the principle that you can’t be sure what any man is going to do unless he’s dead. Then you know where he is.”