“Indeed! I hope you had a pleasant passage. It depends so much on your fellow-passengers, does it not?”
“O yes, we had a very nice lot of men on board, wounded officers mostly. There were a couple of very decent civilians, too—a giant of a fellow called Jones, and a blind baronet, Sir Ernest Kershaw.”
Eva’s bosom heaved.
“I once knew a Mr. Ernest Kershaw; I wonder if it is the same? He was tall, and had dark eyes.”
“That’s the man; he only got his title a month or two ago. A melancholy sort of chap, I thought; but then he can’t see now. That Jones is a wonderful fellow, though—could pull two heavy men up at once, as easily as you would lift a puppy-dog. Saw him do it myself. I knew them both out there.”
“Oh! Where did you meet them?”
“Well, it was rather curious. I suppose you heard of the great disaster at that place with an awful name. Well, I was at a beastly hole called Helpmakaar, when a fellow came riding like anything from Rorke’s Drift, telling us what had happened, and that the Zulus were coming. So we all set to and worked like mad, and just as we had got the place a little fit for them, somebody shouted that he saw them coming. That was just as it was getting dark. I ran to the wall to look, and saw, not the Zulus, but a great big fellow carrying a dead fellow in his arms, followed by a Kafir leading three horses. At least, I thought the fellow was dead, but he wasn’t—he had been struck by lightning. We let him in; and such a sight as they were you never saw, all soaked with blood from top to toe!”
“Ah! And how did they come like that?”
“They were the only survivors of a volunteer corps called Alston’s Horse. They killed all the Zulus that were attacking them, when the Zulus had killed everybody except them. Then they came away, and the blind fellow—that is, Sir Ernest—got struck in a storm; fellows often do out there.”
Eva put further questions, and listened with breathless interest to the story of Ernest’s and Jeremy’s wonderful escape, so far as the details were known to Mr. Jasper, quite regardless of the pitiless fire that young gentleman was keeping on herself through his eyeglass. At last, reluctantly enough, he rose to go.