“Oh yes, I’ll take care.”
The march back began, and at the second step Nic felt that a cold ring of iron had been pressed between his shoulders—the pistol-muzzle resting upon his skin where the shirt had been torn down from neck to waist.
He could not suppress a shiver, for the heat and passion of the struggle had passed away, leaving him weary, aching, and depressed.
But in a few minutes the pistol-muzzle was withdrawn, it being awkward for the holder to walk over the rough ground and keep it there; and the prisoner marched on between his black warders as patiently as Pete in front, thinking perhaps the same ideas.
For he felt that they had not taken warning by the hints they had received. Humpy Dee had been on the watch, and, in his malignity, let them get away before giving notice to the sentry, that they might be caught, ironed, and flogged, or perhaps meet their death in the struggle.
But Nic had yet to find that Humpy Dee’s designs were deeper than this.
The walk back was not long enough for a hundredth part of the bitter thoughts that crowded into Nic Revel’s brain; neither would they have got a hearing had the distance been a thousand times the length, on account of the one dominant horror which filled his brain: “Will they flog us?—will they flog us?” That question was always repeating itself, and, when the prisoner heard Pete utter a low groan, he was convinced that the poor fellow was possessed by similar thoughts.
Only so short a time before that they had left their quarters, and now they were back in the darkness, their plans crushed, and only the punishment to look forward to.
“Now, Sam, be sharp with a couple of lanthorns and those irons,” cried the overseer.
“Iss, sah.”