Groping in the dark, Kasba and Minnihak ultimately freed and carried Sahanderry from the ruins, but with heroic self-denial the girl refrained from questioning him till a large fire had been made by setting a light to some of the wreckage. The night was intensely cold and Sahanderry was chilled to the bone.
He crouched over the fire, his eyes wild and bewildered in expression, for he was not yet fully convinced of his miraculous escape. His burnt and torn clothing, his scorched hair and eyebrows, testified to how narrow that escape really had been.
After waiting some minutes—interminable minutes they seemed to the girl—she could restrain herself no longer, but with a voice which quivered with suppressed but almost overpowering anxiety.
“Se tah (my father), Bekothrie (master)?” she queried desperately.
The injured man staggered to his feet with a hoarse cry of horrified remembrance. All thought of Broom’s deadly shot and its consequences had completely slipped from his confused brain. Released from a position of extreme peril, saved from what he had considered an absolutely certain death, his mind had become blank to all else but his own unaccountable deliverance. The girl’s questions brought back all the terrors of those horrible scenes. He wiped the sweat of remembrance from his brow with trembling hands. He shook like a leaf in a storm. Completely overcome, he lost all power of speech and stood rocking himself to and fro.
In the horror of conviction that either Roy or her father, perhaps both, had perished miserably, had been blown to pieces or scorched out of all semblance of a human creature, Kasba started impetuously forward. Clutching the distraught Sahanderry’s hands she forcibly drew them from his face. “Where are they?” she demanded sharply.
Pointing with a shaking hand at the ruins, “Bekothrie is there,” he cried hoarsely, then fell upon his face writhing and groaning.
Ignoring Sahanderry’s emotion the girl rushed back to the ruins. Quick and agile as a cat, she sprang from log to log, then suddenly disappeared altogether. Minnihak, who had remained motionless beside the fire, watching the foregoing proceedings with great bewilderment, followed less hastily. Arriving at the spot where the girl had disappeared he paused to look about him. A sharp cry, proceeding from the same pile of logs that had protected Sahanderry, caught his ear.
Squeezing himself between huge beams which hung dangerously suspended in his path, Minnihak dimly discerned Kasba bending over a dark figure. Picking his way carefully, he approached her, and by the uncertain light discovered her supporting the head and shoulders of a man upon her knees. But there was nothing in dress or figure by which to identify him. His clothes were burned to rags, his face was black, and all his hair had been scorched away.
Yet though Minnihak failed to recognize him, Kasba had; and all in a flutter of tenderness words of love poured forth thick and fast, but Roy lay all unconscious, deaf to everything.