“Go on,” he said at last. “If you hadn’t what?”
“If I hadn’t caught up to you, it would have been all over.”
“Nonsense! Why? You’d have gone back.”
“No. I’d been one whole day without anything to eat, and I couldn’t have got back, tired as I was, in less than four days. I should have lain down and died.”
“But you’d have met somebody,” said Perry.
“Up here? No. There’s a caravan of llamas comes down about twice a year, and now and then a traveller comes along, but very seldom. How many people did you meet?”
“Not one.”
“No, and you were not likely to. I knew this, and it made me keep on walking to overtake you, for it was my only chance.”
“But did you think about what a risky thing you were going to do before you started?”
“No,” said Cyril sadly; “all that came after, and there was no going back.”