"What?" gasped Ronnie. "What?"
He sprang to his feet, the awful look in Baring's eyes reflected in his own, and made a dash for the doorway in which Baring stood. He stumbled as he reached, it and the latter threw out a supporting arm.
"It's no use your going," he said, his voice hard and mechanical. "There's nothing to be done. I've been as near as it is possible to get. It's nothing but a raging torrent half a mile across."
He moved straight forward to a chair, and thrust the boy down into it. There was a terrible stiffness—almost a fixity—about him. He did not seem conscious of the men that crowded round him. It was not his habitual reserve that kept him from collapse at that moment; it was rather a stunned sense of expediency.
"There's nothing to be done," he repeated.
He looked down at Ronnie, who was clutching at the table with both hands, and making ineffectual efforts to speak.
"Give him some brandy, one of you!" he said.
Someone held a glass against the boy's chattering teeth. The colonel poured some spirit into another and gave it to Baring. He took it with a hand that seemed steady, but the next instant it slipped through his fingers and smashed on the floor. He turned sharply, not heeding it. Most of the men in the room were on their way out to view the catastrophe for themselves. He made as if to follow them; then, as if struck by a sudden thought, he paused.
Ronnie, deathly pale, and shaking all over, was fighting his way back to self-control. Baring moved back to him with less of stiffness and more of his usual strength of purpose.
"Do you care to come with me?" he said.