“That you obeyed orders.”
“He wouldn’t,” growled Mark. “He’d call me a contemptible cur. So I should be if I went. How could I face Mrs O’Halloran and Miss Mary again?”
The major seemed to choke a little, and he gave quite a gasp, whilst certainly his eyes were suffused with tears as he cocked his gun and turned upon Mark.
“I order you to go, sir,” he said. “Run for it while there’s time.”
“I won’t,” cried Mark fiercely. “I’m going to stop and load the guns.”
The major gave a long expiration, as if he had been retaining his breath, but said nothing, only laid his gun-barrel ready on the natural breastwork of rock before him, waved Mark a little way back into shelter, and then stood ready as the beat of feet on the sand was plainly heard, accompanied by a hoarse panting as of some one who had been running till quite breathless.
Then from just round behind some intervening branches which grew out broadly by the projecting rocks there came another hoarse yell.
“Yah!”
There was a pause, and from the distance an answering cry.
Then a terrible silence. The steps had ceased, but the hoarse panting continued, and for the moment Mark was in hopes that their concealment might prove effectual, and the savages pass on, and to aid this he bent down softly to make a threatening gesture at Jacko, and to hold Bruff’s muzzle tightly closed as the pair lay on the birds, among whose feathers Jack’s fingers were already busy.