“Don’t, sir!” cried the poor fellow in a choking voice; “don’t! It’s like laying it on to a chap with a wire whip.”
“Then do your duty. Go.”
“I can’t, sir; I can’t,” cried the lad, literally writhing, as if the blows were falling upon his back and sides. “I dessay I am a coward, but I’d follow you anywheres, sir, if the bullets was whistling round us, and them devils were waiting for us with their knives; but I can’t go and leave you now, sir. You ain’t fit to leave. It’d be like killing you—murdering of you, sir, with the cold and starvation.”
“It is your duty to go.”
“But you don’t know how bad you are, sir,” pleaded the lad, with the great sobs struggling to escape from his breast. “You don’t know, sir; but I do, sir. You’d be frozen stiff before it was light again.”
“Perhaps; but I should die knowing that an effort was being made to save those we have left behind.”
“You’ve done all you can do, sir,” pleaded Gedge passionately. “We can’t do no more.”
“I can’t, but you can. I call upon you once more to go and do this thing. If you have any manhood in you, go.”
“I can’t, sir,” groaned Gedge.
“You coward!—it’s your duty to go.”