“It must sound like that,” said James, “in a moving battle: a running fight that is passing out of hearing.”
At nine o’clock the drums and the firing ceased. Even the fires in the camp must have been allowed to die down, for the silver of the moon washed all the sky. The bush stretched as grey and silent as if no living creature moved in it; and with the silence returned a sense of the definite vastness of that moonlit land, the immemorial impassivity of the great continent. It was a beautiful and melancholy sight.
“In Europe millions of men are slaughtering each other,” James whispered.
“Now you will go to bed?” she pleaded.
He took her arm, as though he were really unconscious of it, and allowed her to help him to his feet. They stood there still for a moment, and while they watched, both of them became suddenly aware of the small figure of a man running towards the bungalow from the edge of the bush. His clothes and his face were of the pale colour of the moonlight, so that he might have been a ghost, and when he caught sight of their two figures on the stoep he waved his hand. It was his right hand that he waved. The other arm was missing. While James stood wondering what had happened, Eva was running down the garden path to meet him. Half-way they met. M‘Crae could see the tears Eva’s eyes shining in the moonlight. He had never seen her face so pale and beautiful.
II
M‘Crae came to the point quickly, too quickly, indeed, for James, whom the sight of this passionate meeting had bewildered.
“We have no time to lose,” he said. “My rifle is in the banda. I suppose Mr. Warburton has a rifle of some sort?” Of course James hadn’t.
“And food. . . . It may take us nearly a week. Three of us. But we mustn’t be overburdened.”
James waved his arms. One can imagine the gesture of this lanky figure in the long black coat with his head in a bandage.