"Don't worry. Take in a reef and go steady for a bit. The milk's spilt, but there are other meadows. . . ." Dicky waved an arm up the river, up towards the Soudan!
The Lost One nodded, then his eyes blazed up and took on a hungry look.
His voice suddenly came in a whisper.
"Gordon was a white man. Gordon said to me three years ago: 'Come with me, I'll help you on. You don't need to live, if you don't want to. Most of us will get knocked out up there in the Soudan.' Gordon said that to me. But there was another fellow with Gordon who knew me, and I couldn't face it. So I stayed behind here. I've been everything, anything, to that swine, Selamlik Pasha; but when he told me yesterday to bring him the daughter of the Arab he killed with his kourbash, I jibbed. I couldn't stand that. Her father had fed me more than once. I jibbed —by God, I jibbed! I said I was an Englishman, and I'd see him damned first. I said it, and I shot the horse, and I'd have shot him—what's that?"
There was a churning below. The Amenhotep was moving from the bank.
"She's going—the boat's going," said the Lost One, trembling to his feet.
"Sit down," said Dicky, and gripped him by the arm. "Where are you taking me?" asked Heatherby, a strange, excited look in his face.
"Up the river."
He seemed to read Dicky's thoughts—the clairvoyance of an overwrought mind: "To—to Assouan?" The voice had a curious far-away sound.
"You shall go beyond Assouan," said Dicky. "To—to Gordon?" Heatherby's voice was husky and indistinct.
"Yes, here's Fielding; he'll give you the tip. Sit down." Dicky gently forced him down into a chair. Six months later, a letter came to Dicky from an Egyptian officer, saying that Heatherby of the Buffs had died gallantly fighting in a sortie sent by Gordon into the desert.