“Then he is dead?” I whispered, with a shudder; and as I looked down into the bottom of the boat, where all was perfectly black, I seemed to see the white face of the lad quite plainly, with his fixed eyes gazing straight at me, full of appeal, and as if asking forgiveness for the past.
“No, not dead, Dale,” said Mr Frewen in a low voice. “Be quiet. Don’t talk about it. We have quite enough to depress us without that. I can say nothing for certain in this black darkness, and he may recover.”
“Is the wound so very bad?” I asked.
“Dangerous enough, as far as I can tell; but he has everything against him, my lad.”
“But if he dies?” I exclaimed in horror.
“Well?” said Mr Frewen bitterly. “If he were a man, I should say it were the best thing that could happen. He has as a young officer hopelessly dishonoured himself. He can only be looked upon as a criminal.”
I could not argue with him, and relapsed into silence, thinking the while of the horror of my messmate’s condition, and asking myself whether it would not have been possible for him to redeem the past, and grow up into a straightforward, honourable man.
It was a hard matter to mentally discuss, but as I sat in the darkness that night, with hardly a word spoken by my companions, I forgot all Walters’ bitterness and dislike, and only thought of his being young and strong like myself; and that he had those at home who would be heart-broken if they heard of his death, and would feel his disgrace as bitterly as he must have felt it himself, when all came to be known.
“I won’t think it was his nature,” I said to myself. “It was a piece of mad folly. He was won over by that brute of a Frenchman, who, now that he has obtained all he wants, throws over the tool he used, and ends by shooting him. Poor fellow! how could he be such a fool?”
I sat on, thinking how bitterly he would have repented his folly, and how his last days must have been spent in the keenest of regret. And it was in this spirit that I bent down over him, to thrust my hand in his breast to feel for the beating of his heart.