There was a deep and significant silence. Then Brotherton said, with white lips, “Do you mean that we can’t take him?”
“That’s what I mean.” The guide spoke deliberately. He could not lift his eyes. Some of the coffee spilled as he lifted the cup to his lips. “We can’t take a thing, ’cept our hands and feet,—not even a blanket. It’ll be life an’ death to do it, then.”
There was another silence. At last Darnell said: “Then it is for us to decide whether we shall leave him to die alone while we save ourselves, or stay and die with him?”
“Yes,” said the guide.
“There is positively not the faintest chance of getting him out with us?”
“By God, no!” burst forth the guide, passionately. “It seems like puttin’ the responsibility on me, but you want the truth, an’ that’s it. He can’t be got out. It’s leave him an’ save ourselves, or stay with him an’ starve.”
After a long while Roberts said, in a low voice: “He’s unconscious. He wouldn’t know we had gone.”
“He cannot possibly live three days, under any circumstances,” said Brotherton. “Mortification has already begun in his legs.”
“Good God!” exclaimed Darnell, jumping up and beginning to walk rapidly forth and back, before the fire. “I must go home, boys! My wife—when I think of her, I am afraid of losing my reason! When I think what she is suffering——”
Brotherton looked at him. Then he sunk his face into both his hands. He, too, had a wife. The guide put down his coffee; large tears came into his honest eyes. He had no wife, but there was one——