“It ain’t, sir; it can’t be, to leave my orficer to die like this. I know it can’t. Why, if I did, and got the help, and took the men back, and the Colonel got to know how, he’d think it warn’t worth getting it at such a price. He’d call me a cowardly dog and a hound, and the lads would groan and spit at me. Why, they’d cob me when they got me alone, and I couldn’t say a word, because I should feel, as I always should to the last day I lived, that I’d been a miserable sneak.”
“I tell you it is your duty, my man,” cried Bracy again.
“Don’t send me, sir! I ain’t afraid,” pleaded Gedge once more. “It’s leaving you to die in the cold and dark. I can’t go!—I can’t go!”
Bracy struggled up at this, supporting himself with his left hand, moved now as he was by his companion’s devotion; but he choked down all he longed to say in the one supreme effort he was making to fulfil the mission he had failed in by another hand.
“I am your officer, sir. You are a soldier, sworn to serve your country and your Queen.”
Gedge looked down at the speaker through the gloom, and saw him fumbling beneath his sheepskin coat with his right hand. The next minute he had drawn his revolver, and Gedge heard it click.
“You hear me, sir?” cried Bracy sternly.
“Yes, sir, I hear.”
“Then obey your officer’s orders.”
“You ain’t an officer now, sir; you’re a patient waiting to be carried to the rear, after going down in front.”