“Silence, you oaf!” I commanded. “One unguarded word—one lifting of an eyelid too few or too many—and the balance tips the other way. I tell you, John Champe, I have been through the valley of the hot plow-shares itself since I left you snoring here!” And then I told him of Arnold’s discoveries, and how, in our breaking and entering, we had left a trail a blind man could follow when we thought we were leaving none at all.
He was sober enough when I finished, and, soldier-like, asked for his orders. I told him he might sleep again till I called him; that he must be fresh for the night.
“Then you are still for trying it on, Captain Dick?—in spite of everything?”
“It would be flying in the face of Providence not to try, and keep on trying until we succeed. We are many miles nearer the goal by what I have just told you, Sergeant.”
But now he was shaking his head dubiously.
“We shall never do it,” he objected; “never, in this world, Captain Dick. I saw that written out on the walls of his room last night. Something will stop us; I feel it in my bones.”
“But you won’t leave the plow in the furrow?” I protested. “We are equals in this, Champe: I can not command you against your convictions, or even against your wish.”
“You can command me, and you shall,” he rejoined. “You will tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. But we shall fail.”
That set me to thinking how far I was justified in involving another man in a desperate affair for which he had apparently lost his stomach; an affair in which my responsibility as his superior officer would be doubled. I did not wish to shirk, God knows, or even to divide the responsibility with my companion. But his new attitude of dejection made me tenderer of his safety than I had been before. In the last resort, I thought it might be possible to let one bankrupt pay the total cost of failure.
“I’ll take you up on that, Sergeant Champe,” I said calmly. “From this time forth you will consider yourself a mere machine. Will you obey me to the letter?”