Captain Norton stopped at the edge of the narrow path, and pointed down to the dry-looking garden at the back of his house, where the tall, tapering flagstaff stood up, with the British colours fluttering in the sea-breeze.
Perry shaded his eyes, and through the clear evening air he could distinctly see his companion standing by a lady, and looking up at the little mule train filing down the slope.
“Why, he has run on home!”
“Yes,” said the captain. “I sent him on to meet his mother alone. Perry, my lad, for the sake of all who hold you dear, never be guilty of such a selfish, thoughtless act as his.”
“I’ll try not,” replied the boy thoughtfully; and then in an animated way: “But, I say, Captain Norton, if it had not been for his thoughtless act, where would we three have been now?”
The captain smiled and looked at the colonel, who had heard all that had been said.
“That’s a question I would rather not try to answer, my lad. There, no more: I’ve promised Cyril to bury the past.”
Weak as he still was from his injuries, and smarting from the bitter disappointment of his failure, Colonel Campion seized the first opportunity which occurred of getting a passage up to Panama, the two boys parting with many promises of keeping up a correspondence, which were none too faithfully fulfilled. Perry wrote from Panama, and again from Barbadoes on the way home. Then three years elapsed before Cyril had a letter, though Captain Norton had heard again and again from his friend the colonel.
Here is a portion of the letter Cyril received:
“I don’t suppose they will do it, but I think they ought to make my father F.L.S. and F.R.S. and F.G.S., and all the rest of it, besides knighting him. For only think, in spite of all the disappointment of losing the packages of seed we so carefully made up, the little lots we had in our pockets, including those you gave me at San Geronimo out of yours—I mean that day on board the packet, when you said, ‘You may as well take these, for they’re no use to me—’ I say, all these were distributed and set, and with the exception of one lot, pretty well all grew, and they have made small plantations in Java, Ceylon, India, and one or two other places, so that in the course of time there’ll be quinine in plenty in hot places all over the world. Which lot do you think it was failed? You, in your modesty, will say your own. Not it, but mine; and I’ll tell you how it was—through my fall down into that horrid place. The seed was of course soaked, and it went off mouldy, I suppose. At all events, none of it grew.”