“Easily!” said another to one of his companions. “Not much of that. Look at the dead and wounded.”
There was no need to draw attention to the poor wretches lying about, for their horrible presence was a burden to every one in the warehouse. Many were lying dead where they had received the fatal bullets, but many more lay where they had crawled painfully so as to get into shelter, evidently in the full expectation that if they did not get under cover they would be made the mark for fresh bullets. And oddly enough, as it seemed to the defender the cover most affected was the tea-chest wall, where those who crawled up lay close, with only a leg or arm visible to the watchers at the windows. They were, of course, so near that their groans came floating in through the openings, and now that they were hors de combat Stan became exercised in his mind as to whether he ought not to take some steps to give the poor wretches water, and he suggested it to his lieutenant.
“Yes,” said the latter, “I’ve been thinking something of the kind, sir; but it would be terribly risky work. They are savages to a man, and as likely as not they would turn upon the hand that came to their help. You see, they’re sure to have their knives and swords with them, and some of them their rifles. There, for instance,” he continued, pointing through the window where they stood to the stock of a jingal whose barrel was out of sight, being close under the wall where its owner lay.
“Yes, I’m afraid it would be risky; but if I went with a bucket of water and a tin dipper they never could be such wretches as to turn upon me.”
“My dear sir,” was the reply, “if one didn’t another would. But you couldn’t possibly do it.”
“I could, and I should feel plenty of confidence in their seeing what I meant.”
“Then your confidence would be misplaced, sir,” said the man decisively. “They’d all think you had gone out to poison them, and would turn upon you at once.”
“Oh, impossible!” cried Stan. “They’d be bound to see.”
“They’d see, sir,” said the man firmly, “but they wouldn’t understand. Men who go about getting their living by slaughtering their fellow-creatures can’t grasp the meaning of an act of self-denial. Besides, you couldn’t go.”
“I could: why not?”