The other man smiled. He rolled a cigarette and stuck it between his teeth. Then he struck a match and lighted it.
“I can’t tell you much,” he said. “I know little of him, but I never heard him boast. He was a reserved fellow with a sort of hard recklessness of manner that gave one the impression that life hadn’t used him well. I remember one night, some fellows, in illustration of his almost incredible lack of any sense of fear, telling a yarn of how during one of the punitive expeditions after some native rising—he was in the Cape Police then, or some force, I don’t remember the details rightly—several of the boys surrounded a hut in which six of the rebellious ringleaders were hiding. They wanted to take the blacks alive and not lose any of their own men over the business. Grit originated a plan, which they carried out, very successfully too, foolhardy though the undertaking seemed. He climbed on a comrade’s shoulders, dropped through a hole in the grass roof right into the midst of them, and he kept those six armed niggers at bay, fighting with a naked sword and his back against the mud wall. And when the other chaps rushed in they declare he was smiling quietly and seemed to be enjoying himself. He never bragged about it, and he never turned a hair. He simply hadn’t felt fear.”
“Then there was no particular credit due to him.”
“Exactly. Nevertheless, it proves the possession of nerve.”
“Oh, dash it all!” the boy, who was called Hayhurst, exclaimed suddenly. “Give the fellow his deserts. It was a damned plucky thing to do.”
The Colonel smiled drily.
“It’s the kind of hare-brained escapade that appeals to youth.”
“Call it hare-brained, if you like. How would you have got at them, sir?” Hayhurst asked brusquely, resenting the other’s speech.
“In exactly the same manner, if I could have found anyone fool enough to volunteer.”
He pitched the end of his cigar out through the open window and sat up straighter.