"You'll come back; promise you'll come back," she pleaded anxiously.
Kneeling down beside her, he bent down and kissed her forehead gently.
"The moment I can," he said.
He tightened the flaps of the tent, and set Gholam Muhammed to pile snow about the skirts of it. Then he went on to the camp.
He found everything there very much in need of him. The plans he had made had not been completed. The men, utterly worn out, had flung themselves down too tired even to care for self-preservation.
Walcot was seriously ill; Gale, Dore, Clones, and the two senior native officers were all blind, and so were ignorant of what had been left undone.
Freddy Gale, though he had twice fallen from exhaustion, had directed personally the issue of rations, and used every chance to cheer his men; but he missed that sense of their condition, and they the sense of his control, which can come from sight alone.
They lay in the snow, inert, benumbed, certain victims to that frozen sleep from which there is no wakening. Only the old soldiers of the Guides had stretched their blankets, and made any likeness to a bivouac.
Terrington's voice came upon the scene like the call of a bugle. There was help in it and scorn and energy and command, and, behind if, unconquerable will and eyes that saw. The men dragged themselves to their feet, and straightened themselves to match its clear direction. Order after order rang out, like the voice of a ship's captain shortening sail, quick, certain, vivid with necessity, but cool as the dew. The heaps of men became ranks that took shape and moved. Rifles rose on end, blankets were slung between them, and slowly the crescent camp came into being, which should offer least resistance to and most shelter from a storm. The little hospital leanto was enlarged, the worst cases were brought in and treated, and then laid for warmth one upon the other at the end of it.
For close on three hours Terrington's labour never ceased for a second, and the camp lived upon his voice. He did not leave it till he had seen every man with some covering over him, and some food to eat; not, indeed, till maternally, he had tucked them all into bed. Then, hoarse with shouting and drunk with fatigue, he staggered back to the little green tent.