“What did he want to look like a savage for?” grumbled Jack. “Who was going to know that any one dressed up—no, I mean dressed down—like that was an Englishman?”
“It was an unfortunate mistake, Penny; you must be more careful if you mean to handle a gun.”
“Here, take it away!” said Jack Penny bitterly. “I won’t fire it off again.”
“I was very nearly making the same mistake,” I said, out of compassion for Jack Penny—he seemed so much distressed. “I had you and Ti-hi covered in turn as you came up, doctor.”
“Then I’m glad you did not fire!” he said. “There, keep your piece, Penny; we may want its help. As for our friend here, he has a painful wound, but I don’t think any evil will result from it. Hist, he is coming to!”
Our conversation had been carried on in a whisper, and we now stopped short and watched the doctor’s patient in the dim twilight of the cavern, as he unclosed his eyes and stared first up at the ceiling and then about him, till his eyes rested upon us, when he smiled.
“Am I much hurt?” he said, in a low calm voice.
“Oh, no!” said the doctor. “A bullet wound—not a dangerous one at all.”
To my astonishment he went on talking quite calmly, and without any of the dazed look and the strange habit of forgetting his own tongue to continue in that of the people among whom he had been a prisoner for so long.
“I thought I should find you here,” he said; “and I came on, thinking that perhaps I could help you.”