“If you can see in this light, you have good eyes, my friend,” said the Captain, with a nervous laugh. “But who in the devil’s name are you?”
“Stand aside, Captain,” whispered Gobo.
“Stand where you are,” said Hume fiercely. “Now give an account of yourselves. You have hunted us, keeping yourselves, like the shabbiest curs, well out of danger; and now, when you have brought us to bay, you have taken the last damnable measure of cowardice against us—thinking, too, there was a lady here. I see that third man move—by heavens! I will shoot.”
“Be calm, my friend,” said the Captain in his hoarse voice; “we do not wish to harm you. Now, can’t you make some agreement with us? You are perhaps alone?”
“Thanks to you,” said Hume grimly.
“Alone—one man against two hundred. What can you do? Just think: you may kill one of us; but then you are yourself killed, or perhaps wounded and given over as a plaything to the Zulus, who are like tigers because of their friends who died.”
“Well, what do you propose?” said Hume, listening to the louder cry of Chanda’s regiment, and to a confused murmur that quivered through the fresh morning air.
“You know why we are here, as we know why you have come. We have been racing against each other for a hidden treasure, and you would not accept the warnings we gave you to desist. There are three of us; let us sink all differences, and do you come in, taking fourth share.”
“And my friends?”
“Your friends? It was the fortune of war that—”