“We three are left,” murmured Laura; “and if we are to die, let us die together.”
“Don’t let us talk of dying,” said Hume, who had been in a brown study.
“We’ve beaten them off before, and we’ll do it again,” continued Webster; “but we must have our bulwarks high and stanch. Let us begin.”
“There is no necessity; at least, I hope so. Wait until I return,” and he cautiously went down the ridge.
“What’s in the wind now?” muttered Webster, as the two looked anxiously at each other, and then stood waiting in silence while they searched the ground in vain for any sign of him. At last, after a torturing interval, they saw him reach the scene of the fight, saw him a moment, and then underwent the same suspense. It might have been an hour after he left them that he suddenly appeared below them from behind a bush, and his face told its tale before he cried, “It is all right.”
“How,” they said, “can it be right? Surely there were two men killed, and the others escaped?”
“Yes,” said Hume, rubbing his knees, for he had crawled for many a yard; “but the two men killed were our enemies.”
“But why, then, did our men leave us?”
“Be sure they have some good reason. When I saw the two retreat after the fight, I thought, with you, that Sirayo and Klaas had been killed; but I could not understand how a man like Sirayo could fall before a foe not armed with a gun, and something in their walk aroused my hopes. When they entered the reeds, I was convinced they were our men; for, naturally, the others, if they had escaped, would have run on at once to the main body.”
“Shake, old man,” said Webster; “you’ve put me in good heart again;” and the two brown and sinewy hands came together in an iron grasp.